


Yeah, That Happened: The Real Story of Buffy and Spike

by cryptwarmer



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 02:50:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 227,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9472220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptwarmer/pseuds/cryptwarmer
Summary: This story is based on the premise that the television program Buffy the Vampires Slayer was based on a book that was based on a real life story. Now Buffy is ready to giver her tell all version of the facts that never made it into the first book or the TV program. It's the real life story of a girl chosen to be the Slayer on the Hellmouth, and her life long relationship with the one vampire in all the world...It's nitty gritty, naughty, frustrating, fascinating and fun. You'll find out how the Council came to be, Spike's true origin story, the beautiful relationship between Buffy and her mother, and the sometimes heartbreaking but always sincere devotion of a vampire to a girl he couldn't get out of his mind and heart.





	1. Introduction: The One Where Buffy Tells You What's What

**Author's Note:**

> When this story was originally being posted, readers were encouraged to leave questions for Buffy in the reviews and she would answer them in the next update. The questions in the Q&A following each chapter came from actual readers.  
> Thanks to Telsa, my dear friend, partner in crime, and beta extraordinaire. I trust her judgment implicitly.

The One Where Buffy Tells You What's What

******************************************************

 

It all happened a long time ago. It has been retold several times, by people on all sides of the story, so much so that reality is no longer canon. What happened doesn't mean as much as what people think happened...unless it happened to you.

 

Real life usually isn't as epic as fiction, because real life is, well, real. It's not fraught with symbolism, or politically, or any other kind, of correct. Things happen too soon or too late, or too fast or too slow, and there is no writer's pen that can change it. That is reserved for the people themselves.

 

I didn't tell my story sooner because I was enjoying the fictional, dressed up, edited version.( I’m a huge fan of the show!) It’s a better story, or at least more palatable. The heroes were more heroic and the bad guys...well, you can judge for yourself.

 

First, there was the book (the one that was a collaboration, not the one which was a supposedly a tell-all down and dirty, about the ugly underbelly of supernatural warfare), then there was the TV show, where there were special effects and pretty people and character arcs. Oh, wouldn't it be nice if in the course of 8 months people could grow and change so admirably!

 

So, here goes with MY story, well, really OUR story. I wonder how much you'll recognize.

 

...........................................................

 

 

Hi, I’m Buffy. Yup, that’s my real name and no it’s not short for anything, though when I was a kid my dad used to call me Buffyboodles. My mom is Joyce, my dad doesn’t want his real name used, which is why they got away with making him such a deadbeat on the show. If they weren’t using your real name they could basically do whatever they wanted without your approval.

 

My parents split when I was 16 and my sister was 12. I moved with my mother to Collinsville. (the town you know as Sunnydale) My sister, who was enrolled in a school for the arts in LA, remained there with my father. She spent weekends with Mom and me unless she was preparing for a performance, which she usually was.

 

When I was younger I enjoyed ice skating, which I stupidly set aside for cheerleading. There isn’t anything wrong with cheerleading, it's just not a life skill that you are likely to get a lot of mileage out of once you graduate high school. But I wanted to be involved with the kids I went to school with, and flirt with the boys on the team. Also, cheer leading wasn't as expensive as ice skating, money became more of an issue after my parents split.

 

The story goes that I burned down the gym of my high school in LA because it was full of vampires. I want to clear a few things up, first, it was the field house (and half of the track/football stadium). I'm convinced there were vampires, but in LA it could be any number of things that someone needed to cover up.

 

There is no doubt in my mind that the school superintendent was involved. I know I smelled gasoline before the fire started. Someone had prepped that building to go up before the cheer squad ever got there. And hey, the school got a new stadium and field house (hence me being certain the superintendent was involved.) 

 

That unfortunate and accidental episode (I admit we were smoking under the bleachers) led to my suspension and ultimately to my expulsion. Now that I know more, I think the Council may have had something to do with the fire. They knew I was the Slayer, and they knew Collinsville needed me. At any rate, it was time to get outta LA. My mom needed a fresh start after the divorce.

 

You know how they say things go on your permanent record? They do, but that's only a problem if and when people bother to look at your permanent record. You can dig dirt on anyone if you look hard enough, and you can also easily miss or dismiss other things. It's not the record that matters, it's the reader. Keep that in mind while you read this book.

 

I left LA to leave behind the ghosts, nightmares, and failures that happened there, Collinsville was that much worse. You should see THAT town’s permanent record!

 

So, here's the thing about Giles. He was younger and more athletic than you see on TV, he was the girl's track and field coach. He recruited me from the cheer squad with promises of hurdles, pole vaulting, and all that fun stuff. It was a difficult decision. I loved my pom poms, but it turns out I really loved blowing past my personal best on a daily basis in track and field.

 

After two months of training(during which I improved suspiciously fast) Giles told me who and what I really was, the Slayer. After that, I had to tone it down at track practice so I wouldn’t call too much attention to myself, while still using the opportunity to train.

 

OK, Timeout. I was the Slayer. Not the Vampire Slayer, that was for TV. What I am saying is that staking vampires was NOT my primary job description. The Slayer fights evil, often by going head to head in ritual (as well as free for all) battle with demons and their agents. Vampires fall into that category, but they are only one of the many flavors of bad. 

 

In our school, coaches also had to teach academic classes. Giles taught library and research techniques (mandatory for 10th and 11th graders) let’s just say I became teacher's pet.

 

The girl you know as Willow was actually named Gwendolyn, Wendy or Gwendy for short. Cute huh, Wendy the witch! Xander was Xander. His on again/off again girlfriend's name was Cordelia. Xander and Cordelia, yup, hard to believe but that is not made up. 

I had potential boyfriends in high school, but Giles managed to shoo them all away, sometimes subtly, sometimes up close and personal, always annoying. Giles meant well. At that point, he was more focused on maximizing the length of my life and was less concerned with the quality. He got better.

 

On TV, you'd get the idea that for some reason my town simply crawled with vampires and I could just stroll along on an average night and do several in. It wasn't that good or bad. We had definite vampire issues in Collinsville (however the demon issue was way worse), but most of the time I had to hunt them. Giles and Wendy did research to track them down, then, along with Xander, they set traps, made plans and always watched my back.

 

I did not routinely slay five vampires a night, not even five vampires a month, so you'd think I would have done better at my schoolwork, right? My grades were poor enough that my mother suggested I quit track so I could put more time into my academics, meanwhile, my library and research teacher had me doing all my research on the supernatural at the expense of French, Algebra, and History.

 

Wendy was my unofficial tutor, making sure I squeaked by in my classes. Most nights I was in bed by 11, at least in the early days.

 

Angel was real, but he wasn't so mysterious or broody. He was a requisitioned vampire. Over the course of two centuries, and a heck of a lot of weird magics, mojos and spiritual ishiness, he was less with the vampire gig and more with the saving his skin gig. The Council (yeah, that exists) called him into service to assist in training Watchers and Slayers, and sometimes to serve as liaison with the bad guys.

 

Angel was kind of hot, and I crushed on him for a while, but I was just another piece of expendable Slayer booty to him. Basically, he never took me seriously but did major ogling of Cordelia. Xander hated Angel because Cordy did major ogling back.

 

Angel would look me over the way someone would look over a horse, he looked at my conformation (that's his word), judged my moves and reflexes. He was very unflattering because he always thought I should be ahead of where I was. He and Giles would discuss me like I wasn't there in the room with them. I was their Slayer, their charge. A job.

 

That's not to say that Angel never broke my heart, he did. I crushed on him big time for a while and he wasn't very nice about it. He was very un-nice when a boy managed to sneak past his and Giles’s watchful eyes. I got a date to the homecoming dance, and a pretty dress, and had a gay old time, such a good time that I wanted to have more gay old times. I began to cut corners on training, so I could do crazy things like talk to my boyfriend on the phone or go to see a movie and make out. Giles and Angel took that as an affront to my calling.

 

My mom stood up for me. She said there was a time and place for everything and that they were training me too hard. That is when Angel became creepy stalker guy, following me and my boyfriend around, and reporting to Giles. Angel tried to intimidate and humiliate me into breaking up with my first real boyfriend, Scott.

 

There's nothing I like more than a challenge, and NO ONE is going to tell me I can’t do something and have me take it lying down. The battle of the boyfriend became epic. To be honest, I enjoyed it at first, sneaking around, having spats with Giles, and especially getting the best of Angel. It was sort of a game until it was not. Angel went too far. Angel often went too far, after all, he was still a vampire.

 

When I was 17, Scott and I had sex. Mom was gone overnight to one of my sister’s performances in LA and I lied and told Giles and Angel I was going with her. Instead, Scott came over. We had, what for 17 yr old kids at the time, was a romantic dinner. We put on a movie we had no intention of watching and had sex on my couch...twice.

 

It was pretty nice, I mean, maybe the actual intercourse wasn't stellar from where I was lying, but it was exciting and I had made a statement about myself. My life, my body, I make my own decisions. I am Buffy, hear me roar! I was always being put in danger for someone's stupid agenda, hell if I wasn't going to grab some fun for myself. But seriously, things could NOT have gone more wrong.

 

Angel either suspected I was lying or he truly was just in the habit of patrolling near my house. Whatever the deal, he took a front and center seat outside the window and watched the whole show. WHY, if he was planning to make a big deal out of it, he waited until we did it TWICE I can't explain, other than he was creepy stalker guy.

 

Basically, after round two, when Scott was getting dressed to head home, Angel came bounding in the door and scared the shit out of him and told him to NEVER come near me again. Scott assumed it was my dad or some crazy uncle threatening him with death or worse. It did not go well. It did not go well at all.

 

Giles swore up, down and sideways that he had nothing to do with Angel’s intrusion, didn't sanction it and didn't support it. He said he knew Scott and I were dating and while he wasn't thrilled about it, he did want me to have fun. Scott was a nice harmless sort and Giles saw no reason to force us apart.

 

Angel felt otherwise, and after stalking us for a while decided to take it into his own hands to control my dating and sex life.

 

That night, after a mortified Scott cleared out, I took Angel on. I had never actually considered fighting Angel before then, he was on my side, he was my teacher. He didn't expect it either and the look on his face when I hauled off and socked him one was priceless. He went flying across the room and deep into the wall. Of course, he tried to talk sense into me, but I was in no mood to talk. That asshole had not only busted up a nice relationship but had spied on my most intimate moment.

 

I came this close (like the space between two words) to staking him. I didn't do it because I thought he and Giles were in on it together and I wanted to dust Angel in front of Giles's face, so Giles would know what to expect. Angel surrendered and said we'd meet up with Giles to discuss it the next day.

 

I was hurt and humiliated. I called Wendy shaking and sobbing, and slobbered out as much of the story as I could over the phone. She sent Xander by to check on me. Poor Xander, he hadn't understood half of what Wendy had told him and she hadn't completely understood me. When he got to my house and saw the disarray and me crying, he thought Angel had raped me and then HE went after him, and I had to stop him. Then, of course, we woke Giles up, and I accused him of plotting the whole thing, and things got all sorts of ugly.

 

Angel and I never made up. He stayed around for a while but I didn't trust him and never forgave him. I assumed he was following me all of the time, and it was clear things weren't going to work out. He was reassigned to LA, and Giles and I were on our own for a while.

 

I met Spike shortly after I moved to Collinsville. He and Angel knew each other from way back. Spike wasn't totally a bad guy, but he wasn't “tame” to the degree Angel was. Spike proved useful from time to time and they had sort of an unsteady truce.

 

When I first met him, I trusted Spike less than I trusted Angel. I’ll say this for him though, Spike was out there, not a creepy stalker. He'd tell you right to your face what he thought of you what he planned on doing.

 

I’m not sure if that’s actually commendable but I preferred it. If I was standing there, Spike spoke to me, not to Angel and Giles ABOUT me. Angel would look me over like horse flesh, Spike looked me over like he wanted to lick every inch of me.

 

I didn't see much of my dad. The two main men in my life, Angel, and Giles were training me to kill things. I was primarily a soldier to them, not a person, not a teenaged girl.

 

Spike’s eyes roved over me like I was the sweetest thing he'd ever seen. “Bet you'd look adorable waving pom poms in some tight little skirt.” He licked his lips and leered at me, but somehow he made it feel like a compliment.

 

“What’s your name pet?” He asked ME, not Giles or Angel. “No, let me guess....Cupcake? Candy?...” He leaned in like he was going to taste me. “Maybe if I just-”

 

Angel sent him flying. As far as Angel was concerned I was HIS property and Spike had to keep eyes, tongue, and fangs off.

 

That was just one more reason to like Spike, Angel HATED him. Any time I spent talking or interacting with Spike was a dig at Angel.

 

There was an unfortunate instance where Spike actually came close to killing me. It was part of some mad scheme to save his sick insane girlfriend. It wasn't personal. I mean, yes he tried to kill me, and I tried to kill him back. It's the Slayer/vampire dynamic. It's what we do. We both put up a good fight and it ended in a draw, but it was never personal. It didn't make me like him any less.

 

OK...how can I not like a guy who thinks I am sexy and adorable when I am sweaty, tousled, dirty and kicking his ass? I mean, right? Giles is all like “Buffy, best take a shower and get to your schoolwork. Spike is all like “Oh Slayer, you smell so delectable...can't decide if I should kill you or take my time with you, from your pretty blond hair to your sweaty blonde curls....” 

I guess I should have thought that was gross. But it wasn't gross. I could tell from how he said it...oh, never mind there is no way that I can explain why I liked it or him. I mean, I was 16 and I got the goosebumps whenever I was around this guy. I couldn’t decide if I should kill him or kiss him. OK, of course, I knew what I was supposed to do because Giles and Angel were very clear on it all. They told me when Spike was an ally, and when he was an enemy. They told me to always keep them informed of his whereabouts and report anything he said. Yeah, right...

 

.................................... 

 

“Um, I don't think you're supposed to be here...” I caught Spike helping himself to some of Angel's supplies and Giles’s files one night in the office.

 

“Course I'm not.” He shrugged. “Are you?”

 

“I can come and go as necessary,” I said with a sniff.

 

His eyes and head rolled towards me and his grin bent in my direction. I could hear him draw in a deep breath and fill his lungs with me. “And what necessary thing brings you here tonight?”

 

I was there because I wanted alone time and that was the last place I thought they'd look for me. How sad is that?

 

“You're an awfully pretty girl to be spending your off hours cooped up here.”

 

“You think I'm pretty?”

 

He looked at me as if I were nuts. “You know you are. What? The Watcher and the ponce tell you otherwise?”

 

I guess my face said it all.

 

“If you weren't the Slayer...and I was hungry...I'd have my right naughty way with you before I drank you.” He looked me over and winked. “Matter of fact....” He drew closer, “wouldn't mind you having your right naughty way with me.” I didn't know they could drop their fangs without doing the whole bumpy vamp face, but he did.

 

I hadn't ever been with a guy. Nearly all my contact with males consisted of training or dangerous battles to the death with evil things. The idea of having my naughty way with someone who would actually appreciate my naughty way was very appealing.

 

“What about your girlfriend?” I was 16, I had to ask. It's a thing, besides I was the Slayer, what with morality, idealism and blah blah blah.

 

Again, he looked at me as if I'd lost my brain. “What of her? You planning on publishing wedding banns?”

 

Ok, so I’m with this hot older guy, who has a girlfriend, is the bad guy, and we'd be totally fooling around behind the back of Angel AND Giles...this was SO tempting.

 

“I don't want to have to kill your crazy, jealous girlfriend.”

 

“Would think you'd like nothing more.” He shrugged. “Be that as it may, she's off shagging Angel as we speak. They tend to get groiny when they see each other.” He said it as if it was of no consequence, but I could tell it bothered him, and made a possible tryst between us all the sweeter, getting with Angel's Slayer right under his nose.

 

I lacked experience and wasn't exactly sure what to do next. He did.

 

They didn't put this on TV (our early encounters didn't even make it into the book). There was nothing correct about what happened next.

 

Spike took a sniff. At the time I didn't know what he was checking for and assumed he was making sure neither Giles or Angel were on the premises. Now I know he was sniffing to gauge my interest. Even though I wasn't fully trained, I was the Slayer and he needed to be careful. If I wasn’t cool with this, he could end up dusty. The entire thing didn't take more than a moment and then he was on me. He had me hauled up onto his lap, his arms wound around me from both sides. One of his hands was behind my head and his other hand was on my back holding me exactly where I wanted to be.

 

He looked straight into my face, his last check before taking the plunge, and I took the opportunity, leaned in and kissed him. It was a chaste kiss because I didn't have a lot of practice, only one or two make out sessions under my belt. Kissing a vampire is NOTHING like making out with a teenage boy.

 

Spike was strong, knew exactly what he wanted and how to get it. Vampires aren't big with the asking permission. As far as he was concerned my kiss basically invited him in and everything from there on out was a go.

 

And so I was introduced to foreplay, such as it was. This was not a boy trying to cop a feel, it was a man who figured he could take his time and make the ride as enjoyable as possible.

 

Holy cats. He was VERY deliberate. Not trying to sneak anything past me. Not wanting either of us to miss one little glorious, tantalizing thing along the way. Spike talks a lot, and he babbled a sort of stream of consciousness narrative that was sexy as all get out.

 

You know how when you board an airplane you're like how the hell is this thing going to fly? then you remind yourself the pilot knows what he's doing and you go find your seat and pull out your book and relax. It was like that. I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew the pilot did and this plane was going to fly.

 

All I had to do was be there with Spike as he drew me along with his hands and mouth and movements of his body. The power in his shoulders, and thighs was intoxicating. I instinctively understood the sounds he made, I made sounds back, and it all made sense.

 

He was biting (not fangy) his way along my collarbone and was kneading my ass with both of his hands when he stopped and said, “Holy buggering fuck.”

 

I knew it was not anything I had done wrong or hadn't done right. His annoyance was the result of something from the outside interrupting our encounter.

 

“Time to toddle Slayer.” He lifted me off of himself. “Watcher's here. You go, I know how to handle myself. And if they ever make you think you're not pretty...” He motioned to his erection. “They're out of their blasted minds.”

 

I smiled at his saying that and dashed off to collect myself. I was disappointed…and not. I mean, hell yes, I wanted whatever was probably going to happen. In that moment I wanted it more than I had ever wanted anything in my life, but looking back, I think it's better that it wasn't all over then. I'm not saying I would have regretted it, but on some level, I was saved by the bell. I got a chance to savor it, clear my head and get all sorts of glorious mileage out of having gotten away with something. I had been told I was beautiful and desirable. (plus all the good physical feelies.)

 

Still, had Giles not come back to his office, I would have been taken by a vampire when I was 16, and there would have been no apologies on either side.

 

4 days later I got another dose of sexy Spike goodness, I went to take out the trash and he was in my yard waiting. “Too bad your mother is home.”

 

“How did you know I live here?” I wasn't scared or angry, just never thought he paid that much attention to me.

 

“Followed you.” He approached. “Sorry we were interrupted.”

 

“Me too,” I said then blushed furiously realizing what a slutty ho that made me.

 

“Shame...” he said.

 

I nodded, but what he was disappointed about now, I was not yet aware of. His fingers were reaching out to me, but I didn't move towards him. We were right outside my house. My mother expected me back inside in a minute. “Now,” he began. He pulled me up against him so I could feel his erection against my back, then he lifted me up so it was nestled right between my ass cheeks. I made a very happy, hungry little noise. “I want you to have something nice to remember me by,” he said in my ear, rocking his hips and mine so my ass rode up and down the length of him.

 

“You going someplace?” I sighed.

 

“Fraid I am pet, exactly where I go is up to you.”

 

I thought he was talking about sex, and how far I'd let him go.

 

“You're going to hear some very bad things about me.” He pressed his chest against my back, bending me forward. “And unfortunately they’re all going to be true.” bump, bump oh hell yes....

 

“What did you-”

 

“I don't want to go and spoil it by breaking the news myself...let your Watcher fill you in.” rub, rub, grind.

 

“Am I going to have to kill you?” I whimpered. This was so unfair

 

“Well, that's it, Luv, you don't HAVE to kill me, but you might want to make it look like you mean to.” He stopped the rubbing, held me right there, perfectly poised against him and ground into me one last time.

 

“Dammit Spike,” I growled and pouted. This was SO not the proper reaction. I twisted in his arms so I could look into his face.

 

“Please stop wriggling, Luv.” His arms were around me like tree roots.

 

“Buffy?”

 

“My mom,” I said needlessly.

 

Our eyes met, there was a resignation and frustration between us, concerning what we wanted to do and what we were going to have to do.

 

Giles came to me later that evening, with the update on Spike's latest evil scheme. I didn't kill him, but I made it look like I meant to.

 

 

......................................... 

 

The whole thing with Angel losing his soul sort of happened, but I had nothing to do with it. It was a gypsy curse like you saw on TV. Ms. Jenny (that's what we called her) knew Angel was in Collinsville, knew the Slayer was in Collinsville and knew that if Angel went rogue, I was the person most likely to end him. There was nothing about losing his soul over a perfect moment of happiness, that was all drama cooked up for prime time.

 

Ms. Jenny and Giles weren't ever really a thing, maybe they flirted but I don't think it went farther than that. He didn't trust her. She knew too much and said too little. After everything went down with Angel she left town on her own. Far as I know she is alive and well someplace. Hi, Ms. Jenny!

 

Giles wasn't all tweedy, but Wesley was. He spent his years in Collinsville in a much more traditional Watchery mode than Giles. Yup, that's right, bad ass me needing TWO watchers to handle me!

 

It wasn't just me, though, it was Collinsville. The place was bad news and getting worse. I didn't save the world from an apocalypse on a yearly basis, but some seriously weird shit went down, and the vamp and demon trouble multiplied.

 

About the Hell Mouth, is there one? Yes and No. First of all, it wasn't under the school library and it didn't look like an enchanted manhole cover. There was a tendency towards tremors (wannabe earthquakes) in Collinsville. There is a rift basically a small tear in the earth, there. It runs along a utility easement. A lot of the weird goings on were attributed to electromagnetic fields from the power lines and transformers.

 

It IS true that the demon/magic thingies could draw on some of that electromagnetic energy for a power boost, but the power lines were put there mainly because no vegetation would grow along the Hell fissures. It saved a heap of money on maintenance costs for the electric and cable company because they didn't have to send people in to mow and cut trees down. The demons even protected the area from intruders, so basically, no one was vandalizing the power equipment that ran along the fissures to Hell.

 

The utility easement ran back behind the High School, and kids did sometimes hang out there (strictly during daylight hours) and smoke up between class and things like that. The area, bare of vegetation and location of a number of very strange and troubling happenings, was fondly known around the town as the Highway to Hell.

 

That just sounds like a bad 80's song, and for TV purposes it was changed to Hell Mouth because that sounds cooler. They did a survey to find out what people's responses to the different terms were and Hell Mouth sounded more like something to be taken seriously, so it won.

 

The fissure/Hellmouth was a hot spot for demon and interdimensional activity. Basically, it’s an unstable area, and the evil element takes advantage of that lack of stability because they are all about chaos.

 

My house wasn't as big or as nice as the one on TV and luckily didn't get trashed all the time by bad guys. It did get damaged a few times (for instance when I embedded Angel in the wall) but these things didn't happen on a weekly basis, and they took a lot longer than 7 days to recover from.

 

About my mom and the Slaying gig...yeah...now there's a story. She wasn't as clueless as they make her look at first on TV, nor was she as accepting as she comes across in the book.

 

At first, my mom was pretty much just dealing with the divorce and the move and wasn't paying all that much attention to me. She drank two or three glasses of wine with dinner, smiled vaguely and went to bed early.

 

I wasn't out every night, so it wasn't overly obvious that anything was going on. My afternoon hours were explained away by my track and field practice. I did sneak out of the house, sometimes for slaying, sometimes just because I wanted to hang out with my friends. My bedroom window was located conveniently above the porch roof and making an escape was a piece of cake, plus, with my astounding track and field superpowers, it was a piece of cake with sprinkles on top.

 

But mom wasn’t stupid. She figured out some crazy things were going on and demanded to know the truth. Giles set up a meeting with her and laid it all. She didn’t like it (well duh) but after reading the history of it and seeing enough proof in the ways of the weird, she accepted it.

 

Wendy really was an awesome friend, she still is to this day. I'm not sure how or why she believed all the crazy vampire stuff except to say that she had grown up playing some pretty weird video and role playing games. After a few experiences with the supernatural, it wasn't that hard for her to buy into the whole package. She was familiar enough with the lore so everything that happened next was no surprise to her.

 

She took to the magic stuff like a fish takes to water. She had a natural talent or affinity as Giles always put it. Wendy prefers the term virtuoso. I like calling her Wendy the Witch because it sounds cute, but she doesn’t consider what she practices to be witchcraft, she calls it sorcery. She reserves the word “witch” for something called a kitchen witch or herbalist, a person who helps people with the little things in life. Witches are rarely (so I am told) involved in stuff like an apocalypse, and fighting big evil.

 

I can't even tell you how many times Wendy's magic saved my life. I wouldn't have lived past 11th grade if it weren't for Wendy. I mean that in the literal sense, what with me being a Slayer and bad guys after me, but also in the sense of being a friend who's friendship was a life saver.

 

I could tell her anything, even when I didn't I think I could. I didn't tell her at the time, about Spike and I getting it on in Giles’s office, but I sort of told her about it later and she was only a little creeped out by it and totally understood.

 

She's cool like that. Even if she doesn't agree with something or finds it distasteful, she doesn't automatically get all righteous and hateful about it. Also, she didn't always jump on the magic train as the reason things happened.

 

Giles, Angel, and Wesley always assumed that magic was behind everything. That's the reason they didn't want me to date, and why they were always sprinkling powders and talking in Latin. Every school dance I went to they were sure was going to become a massacre. They didn't trust ANY boys. They even had my father in LA trailed for a while because they thought me might be involved in evil trafficking of some sort.

 

When I bought new shoes or mascara Giles and Angel would always have it scanned to make sure it wasn't cursed. Do I sound resentful? I totally am, though that's not completely fair. It was their job to keep me alive and there were a lot of things that wanted me dead.

 

Oh, here's another thing, it's true that most Slayers die young, but it's only a 7-year gig. So if you make it from 15 to 22, you age out. It hasn't happened many times. I was Slayer #5 to earn her wings.

 

Did I ruin it for you? Telling you that I didn't bite the dust, or get sucked into Hell? Technically I did, but more on that later.

 

Living to tell about it is actually a good thing because otherwise there would be no one to tell MY story. They could (and have, there are at least 3 books out there that I know of) tell THEIR story, and good stories they are, but in the end, I was the Chosen One, the one girl in all the world, and he was my Chosen One, the one vampire in all the world...

 

**************************************

 

Q&A

Didn’t you keep a diary?

I started to, but when I found out that Angel was following me around etc I quit. He was already invading all my privacy, I didn’t want him reading my thoughts too. I regret that I wasn’t able to keep a diary, I think it would have been a big help to me at the time to have a place to write my thoughts down.

On the other hand, maybe it would have been a security risk. But heck, the Watchers keep detailed diaries of everything. And I mean EVERYTHING, seriously, the Slayer gets NO privacy.

 

How much input did you have in the TV program? 

The program was inspired by the first book I wrote (in collaboration) about my years as an active Slayer. "Inspired by" means they like the idea and they will use it as a jumping off point, or foundation. After that, things take on a life of their own. 

We signed off on them using any information that was in that book. There were already things either left out, changed or altered in the first book, mostly because one or more of us wasn’t comfortable with the real information being public. So we didn’t have any rights of refusal beyond that, except that we COULD say that we didn’t want our character’s actual name to be used if they were going to alter the character (which they will)

If you’ve read the book, you already know that some of the TV show characters have different names, and some characters are composites.

The writer’s of the show did come to me at times for consultation or to ask if I would share more of my story etc. But in truth, once we signed off on our rights, they could do what they wanted.


	2. The One Where Spike Kills the Neighbor's Cat, Accidentally on Purpose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spike kills a cat. It's not graphic, but if that bothers you, don't read this.

The One Where Spike Kills the Neighbor's Cat, Accidentally on Purpose

 

I think I already mentioned that this book, like life, isn't going to be gentle or politically correct. If you're squeamish, easily offended or extremely moral, stop reading now. Remember that for seven years my job was to kill large, dangerous, evil creatures. Therefore I spent a lot of time with large, dangerous, evil creatures, that were doing their dangerous and evil things.

 

That girl on the TV show is very moral and takes her duty seriously. I took my duty seriously, but I was less with the moral and more with the pissed off, often resentful, "can we just get this over with", thing.

 

Have you seen that episode where Cordy wishes Buffy had never come to Sunnydale and then you get to see how charming a place it is without her? Then Buffy shows up, but it's a different version of Buffy? That Buffy is me.

 

I didn't trust much of anyone and didn't suffer fools lightly. I think I had more friends than that Buffy, but pretty much, when you're visualizing this story, think of her.

 

OK, so back to the neighbor's cat. I don't like cats. They smell. Our neighbor had 5 cats. She let them run loose and the male cats would come and spray pee all over things, like the tires of our car, our lawn furniture, and our bushes.

 

It wasn't just annoying, it was disgusting and rank. That smell doesn't wash off, and it's gag worthy. I guess it's some sort of musk and they are marking their territory, but see it WASN'T their territory it was my territory and my mom's territory.

 

By the time I hit Slayerhood, my mom knew that I was “different”. She wondered why I was irritable all the time and worried that it was a hormonal issue (As it turns out there are some Slayer related hormone issues), so she took me to the doctor who said that putting me on birth control pills would clear it right up.

 

I have a theory. A long time ago (like over a hundred years, back in Spike's day) doctors used to blame all their female patient's ills on “hysteria”. Basically sex or lack thereof. Over time people realized that was chauvinistic and wrong and doctors actually started treating disease. But pretty much doctors still think that any problem a teen girl has can be fixed by putting her on birth control pills.

 

Birth control pills are a concoction of hormones, and people assume they will balance anything out. I think that the doctors do it because they believe most teen girl problems can be fixed by them having a lot of sex. There, I've said it. Just like it was in Spike’s day, doctors count on sex to fix everything wrong with a woman. Put a girl on birth control and send her out to have a lot of happy making sex.

 

Slaying made me horny and being horny made me irritable. The neighbor's cat made me VERY irritable (and I think maybe a little horny). All that vile cat piss, full of hormones designed to make cats horny, was doing a number on me. I hated the smell, but that doesn't change the fact that the chemistry affected me. I'd come home, all juiced up on adrenaline and violence, and sweating hormones (because all teen girls do and I was basically teen girl plus), then I had to pass the gauntlet of kitty hormone bombs.

 

I think this is another reason why Angel didn't want me getting any with Scott. He knew a frustrated Slayer was a more deadly Slayer. Heck, maybe he even planted all those male cats at the house next door. Maybe he was delivering sweet, furry, male kittens on a monthly basis. I wouldn't put anything past him. It was all about the mission in those days.

 

It's hard to sleep ramped on adrenaline and hormones. I mean, think about it, what do you do after an especially fulfilling romp in the sack? You fall asleep, right? No sex, no sleep. Even with all that exercise I got training and slaying, I didn't sleep very well. Between Slayer hormones and cat hormones I was practically going out of my mind.

 

Enter mom taking me to see gyno and gyno predictably putting me on birth control pills.

 

The pills didn't do much, so I tried taking two a day, then three and I was still violent as all get out. My mom and Dr had real problems with my binging on birth control, (apparently, it's uncommon for people to attempt to OD on birth control) and they were concerned I had some kind of freaky fear of sex, which is the opposite of true.

 

I wanted sex. I wanted sex all over the place, just like anyone my age, and not getting any was making me crazy. I just wanted the ragey feelings to go away and I thought the pills might help. Clearly, Angel and the Watchers weren't going to let up on the “no boys allowed” rule, so sexing it out wasn't an option.

 

This is when they told me one of the Big Lies. There are a lot of Big Lies that Watchers tell Slayers in an effort to scare them into behaving the way they want them to. Big Lie #1: a Slayer can't have sex with normal boys because she'll break them in half or squeeze their dicks so hard the blood flow will stop and they will shrivel and fall off. (This sounds exciting so they sort of hinted it was true in the TV show.)

 

In spite of it being the tail end of the 20th century, they had convinced me that getting horizontal with a boy might kill or maim him for life. Scott had only lived because I was yet still inexperienced and Angel had come in to save the day.

 

I feel like an idiot now to have ever believed them, but I sort of believed them at the time. My strength and power were freakish compared to other people's so it wasn't totally crazy to think that I could hurt someone it a moment of passion. Still, it was really crappy for them to try to scare me out of having sex.

 

Everyone knows boys wank off. Basically anytime a teen boy has a closed door between him and the rest of the world, we're supposed to assume he's wanking off. Girls, not so much. I knew girls did it, but there was this understanding that girls didn't NEED to do it, so if they did, it was because there was something wrong with them. That is so unfair because a guy can jerk off go and have sex and immediately jerk off again and everyone acts like it's cute or something.

 

Have I mentioned that I don't like cats?

 

Our neighbor had this one huge one, it was a patchy orange and white male with part of an ear missing. She called it Mr. Fluff, and it was the top offender in the neighborhood piss-o-thon.

 

I was fast. I could catch and tackle just about anyone, but catching small animals requires an entirely different skill set. I'd walk up to the house and smell Mr. Fluff. I would SEE him backing up, straightening out his tail and getting ready to spray, but I just couldn't snatch him fast enough to stop him.

 

If I did get close, I ended up getting reeking cat piss on my skin and clothes.

 

The final straw was when he hit my rather new, very nice, pair of boots. I left them on the back porch for a nanosecond while I ran upstairs to get clean clothes, by the time I came back Mr. Fluff had marked my boots as his personal property.

 

I saw red, white and orange and nothing was going to stop my horny fury. NOTHING. This was war. Even triple doses of hormones couldn't calm me down. Since I couldn't snatch the cat, I had to find another way. As a Slayer, I was mostly a hand to hand combat fighter. I had weapons, but there was something in me that wouldn't let me borrow an enchanted sword from Giles to eviscerate the neighbor's cat. It felt like sacrilege.

 

Doing anything to the neighbor's cats seemed wrong, after all, it was just a stupid hormone crazed animal, much like myself. True I didn't go around peeing on anyone...well, very rarely anyway (more on that later), but the cat was a slave to his chemistry. However, the third time I caught him in the act of getting some loving from the neighborhood slut cats, I lost all sympathy. He was getting the feline equivalent of laid, ergo, he needed to lay off the boots.

 

Thump, bump, budada bump. “Knock, knock...Slayer, you in there?” I’m not sure if it was a compliment or an insult that I was the first person Spike came to see when he breezed through town. I guess it's possible he “saw” someone else (as in took them out for a late night snack) before he dropped in on me, but in a more conventional sense, I was the first one he came to see.

 

I had never invited Spike into my home. I wasn’t afraid of him. If he got out of hand I'd dust him, easy peasy, but I didn't want him to show up unannounced to see my mom or sister.

 

“What is it?” I went to the window and growled.

 

He was clearly surprised by my tone of voice, seeing as when we last parted it was with great reluctance, having never had the opportunity to finish what we started.

 

“What's got you all bothered?” he asked, blowing smoke my way.

 

“THAT!” I pointed towards the yard where sure enough, Mr Fluff was getting onto his tiptoes to do his thing.

 

“Not a fan of the feline?”

 

“He ruined my boots. He ruined my porch. He's ruining my life.” Which was way dramatic but the smell of cat piss was seriously messing with me.

 

Spike has been around a long time. My behavior didn't have him either rolling his eyes or rushing off in annoyance. He lit another cigarette, handed it to me and sat there smoking until I calmed down. I took a draw or two, but it wasn't my thing (I had lost interest after burning the field house down) and I handed it back to him.

 

“You're the Slayer, why don't you do something about it?” To him, that seemed the easiest thing in the world.

 

“Do you like tuna?” I asked him. He made that noise he makes when you've proven yourself to be stupider than he previously gave you credit for. “How about catnip?” I went on. “If I dangle a string, will you get all distracted?” I asked.

 

“What are you going on about?”

 

“I slay demons and vampires, an entirely different vibe than cats. Cats don't suck blood and rape virgins, and vampires don't chase butterflies and piss on people's lawn furniture. I don't hunt cats. It's not my thing. I'm not good at it.”

 

He considered this a minute, tossed the butt of the second cigarette into the gutter and watched Mr. Fluff do his dirty work.

 

“Don't you think you might be overreacting?”

 

“Can't you smell that? I thought you had a freakoid sense of smell.”

 

“Oh, so that's not you...I mean...that smell.”

 

And I swear he was totally serious. He sat there, on my roof and accused me of stinking like a tom cat. I leaped out of the window so fast. I hit him broadside and we went tumbling off the roof and onto the lawn. Lucky for me Spike hit the ground first. Lucky for Mr. Fluff he heard the scuffle and took off running before we landed, where, just a few seconds earlier, he'd been doing his little dance.

 

“Bloody hell.” Spike roared. I hadn't heard any bones break so I assumed his outburst was aimed at the other source of discomfort, wet bushes, and the pungent Eau de Mr. Fluff.

 

“OMG.” I felt the wet on my arm. I went to cover my nose and inadvertently spread some of the spray onto my cheek.

 

Spike let out a stream of curse words in what sounded like several languages both human and demon.

 

“And you thought that smell was ME?” I exploded both verbally and physically, and to tell the truth, sexually. I was horny as hell, and the object of several months of sex dreams and fantasies was writhing below me. I was reacting to the damn chemical attractant of the cat urine and Spike himself. It all came out in our own version of a cat fight.

 

I let loose on him, and he made noises that I've never heard outside of an actual catfight before or since, unearthly hair-raising, bloodcurdling, yowls, plus there was a lot of hissing and biting and clawing.

 

Ideally, that would have ended in a fuck fest, but given that the stench had made me more with the angry and less with the horny, there was blood, torn clothing and a lamentable spreading of the cat pee over myself, Spike and our clothes.

 

“Those DAMN cats!” My mother cursed from inside the house. Stomp, stomp...closet door opening...stomping down the stairs...opening of the back door.

 

Spike and I stopped fighting and lay still. “OMG Slayer, she's got a gun,” he gasped. He grabbed me and dove out of her line of vision, rolling us behind the shed.

 

Sure enough, she cocked the shotgun (which she kept around for unexpected visitors) and let fly straight into the air. It's hard to describe just how loud a shotgun is when you know the charge is meant for you.

 

My mother isn't exactly that nice, mild-mannered woman you've seen on TV.

 

“Mom!” I squawked, “Stop shooting.”

 

“Buffy? Are you out there? I thought I heard something on the roof, then those cats...”

 

“Your mum's a feisty one,” Spike said approvingly.

 

“It's um, me..” I stood up and cautiously came out from behind the shed, very slowly.

 

“OMG Buffy, what's that smell? Did you kill Mr. Fluff?” She didn't sound like she'd be entirely upset if I said yes.

 

“No, I was...the cat, came up on the roof and I sort of fell off.” My mom wasn't friendly with vampires, understandably, and there were no late night cozy cocoa dates between her and Spike. Telling her I was half fighting with, half humping a vampire while doused in tomcat piss didn't seem like a good idea.

 

“Did he get away?” (again, not so much with the thinking she'd be sorry if he hadn't).

 

“Yeah, he did.” A yowl came from behind the shed. I figured it was Spike teasing me.

 

My pajamas were torn. The top was torn nearly all the way down the middle, and the bottoms shredded on one leg, with a slit up the butt.

 

“You got that way trying to catch Mrs. Abrosia's cat?”

 

Was there even a good answer for that?

 

“It ruined my boots,” I reminded her.

 

My mother put her hand to her face, “You can't come in here smelling like that,” she said in horror. I could hear a sizzling giggle coming from behind the shed.

 

I could also hear several doors and windows up and down the block opening and a police siren nearing the house.

 

“What? Are you going to make me sleep out here?”

 

“Wash yourself off.” She motioned to the hose.

 

“You know this doesn't wash off,” I hissed.

 

“I'll grab the Febreeze,” she said and disappeared inside.

 

I heard another yowl, then a small shriek, then a thump.

 

Something flew over the top of the shed and landed on the porch step. It was large, matted and missing a head. It was what remained of Mr. Fluff.

 

I took it as a peace offering.

 

Mom returned with the Febreeze.

 

“You expect me to shower in the hose?”

 

“I don't know honey...You can't bring that smell in here...go into the basement through the side door, wash in the laundry sink...”

 

Seriously, my mom was tough. She expected me to be tough too. Hey, if I could stay out till all hours wrestling demons, I could shower in the yard.

 

“And hurry up, before the police get here.”

 

So I took the Febreeze and stomped around to the basement entrance and went into the house.

 

“Hey now, where you going?” Spike was suddenly only inches behind me.

 

“You heard.”

 

“And what about me, I need a shower too, AND my clothes washed. Look, I did you a solid, took the blighter out.”

 

“I'm not inviting you into my house.”

 

“Just the basement then...”

 

“The basement is part of my house.”

 

“Just make it conditional, basement only.”

 

“Can I do that?”

 

“Course you can.” Something in his tone made me doubt it was true.

 

“No, I'll give you soap and I'll wash your clothes, but you shower outside with the hose.”

 

Interestingly, on that long, sleepless night I discovered a few things. Vampires are adept at catching small animals. Laundry soap does a much better (though not completely successful) job of removing cat pee odor than bar soap. Laundry soap also does a number on your hair that even several applications of conditioner can't fix.

 

I also got a toe curling view of a naked vampire in the porch light scrubbing himself with laundry soap and cursing in several languages. Technically I was inside waiting on the laundry, but Spike knew full well I was watching him.

 

“This wasn't exactly how I imagined our reunion,” he said.

 

“Me neither, but it was memorable, in its own way.”

 

“Think we'll be remembering this smell for the next month or two.” I heard the hose going.

 

“There has to be something that gets rid of it like tomato juice does for skunk spray,” I said hopefully.

 

“Hate to tell you but that doesn't much work either.” It was clear he had firsthand experience. “Slayer, this puts me in a bit of a tight spot.”

 

I couldn't possibly imagine how it could be any worse on a vampire than on a 17 yr old girl. “It’s going to make it damn hard to hunt humans smelling this way.”

 

“And this should bother me why?” After all, my job was to keep him from hunting humans.

 

“Have a heart, Luv.”

 

“It's not like there's anything I can DO about it.” I pointed out. “I'm going to bed Spike.”

 

“Smelling like that? You really want that in your sheets?”

 

“I washed it off...mostly.” I sniffed my arm but by this time my nose was so overwhelmed by the odor I actually couldn't tell if I'd made any headway or not.

 

“Luv, could you throw me some clothes?” he asked and he sounded for all the world like a man on a sitcom who's wife literally made him sleep in the doghouse.

 

I dug around in some boxes and found some of my dad's old T-shirts we kept for paint rags and a pair of pants from a rain suit.

 

“This is the best you can do?” I got the sense that he knew it was, but felt like he had to check just the same.

 

In the end, I gave Spike some old sheets we used for drop cloths and let him hide out in the space between the outside door and inside door to the basement.

 

I went to bed, wrapped in my own drop cloth hoping it would keep the smell from getting in my sheets.

 

The next day my mom went to a pet store and came home with three bottles of various products guaranteed to remove cat urine odor.

 

I rewashed Spike's clothes and gave him a bottle of the special soap to scrub himself with.

 

“Gotta let me in Slayer. Gonna make me wait here stinking, until dark and shower in your yard again?”

 

“That's the breaks. It's what you signed on for when you became a vampire.” I didn’t bother to feign sympathy.

 

He frowned at me. Then a smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “I'll let you watch...” He knew I'd enjoyed what I could see of him the night before.

 

“No can do.” I admit I smiled a little myself.

 

“Blast..” he cursed...then he tried again “I'll let you help...”

 

A wild rush of mad passion shot through me. I heard him chuckle.

 

“Rub a dub dub, two for a scrub, in the laundry tub...”

 

I gave an exaggerated sigh.

 

“Come, Luv, what's that about?”

 

“This wasn't how I imagined our reunion.” I seconded his emotion from the night before.

 

“Won't hold it against you,” he assured me. “It'll seem funny in time.”

 

I supposed he was right, but it might take a VERY long time before I could share his chuckle.

 

“You know, what you said...about inviting you in, Can I really do that? Make it the basement only?” I was tempted to invite him in just so he could get a proper wash-up.

 

He hesitated just a moment too long. When he said, “Course it's true.” I already knew for certain it was a lie.

 

I went and found the mop bucket and filled it with hot water, got a wash rag and a towel and brought them to him with the special soap. “Best I can do,” I told him.

 

He nodded thanks, and when I turned to go said, ”You're not going to stay and scrub my back?”

 

See, that was what I liked about Spike, he wasn't all about the mission 24/7. He wanted me to have a full and balanced life. I walked up the stairs into the house and left him between the doors to clean himself up.

 

He was gone by nightfall and I gathered the drop clothes, towels and rag. The smell wasn't completely gone, but it had mostly faded.

 

For the next few weeks, the occasional headless tomcat appeared on Mrs. Abrosia's back porch. It was cruel, but Spike is a vampire, and he had to eat something while the smell wore off. Apparently, the odor attracted other cats.

 

OK, now the gross part (I guess the dead cats were sort of gross...anyway) even though cat pee smells REALLY bad, after that night wrestling around with Spike and watching him shower in the hose, the smell really got me horny. That is all kinds of wrong and WEIRD, but that night left a powerful imprint on my young psyche. Every time I'd smell cat pee, I'd feel sort of flush. This totally grossed me out.

 

Other than the dead cats I didn't see any sign of Spike for a while. Like any young girl, I figured that it had grossed him out so much that he wouldn't want anything to do with me. I didn't know much about vampires at that time. I didn't know much about Spike. Basically, I didn't know much about anything, other than I never wanted a pet tomcat, and I definitely did want another view of showering vampire.

 

Sneaking into my window a few weeks later I noticed there were a number of cigarette butts in the rain gutter. I really needed to do something about this “too lusty to fall asleep” problem. Turns out masturbating, at least for me, was something of a learned skill. I had a lot of false starts and unsatisfied endings. The only thing I could get to work, was when I was in the shower, imagining a vampire scrubbing in the dark. When I came I realized I was babbling curse words in several demon languages.

 

…............................

Q&A

 

Hey, Buffy, how many times did you want to kill Angel and Giles?

If you mean actually KILL, as in gone forever, just that one time when Angel humiliated me and Scott.

It was one thing for them to work me hard and demand a lot of me as the Slayer. I didn’t love it, but I knew why they did it. But barging in the way Angel did was unforgivable, it was a betrayal on a personal level.

Until I knew (and believed) that Giles had nothing to do with that situation, I FELT like I wanted to kill him, painfully and slowly, but I don’t think I did. After all, he wasn’t at the scene of the crime and it really wasn’t his style.

As a cranky teen I used to say “I’m going to kill you” when I got pissy about something, but I didn’t mean it, it was just something to say to make a point.

Once Angel left, the dynamic between me and Giles changed a lot. He was on his own with me and felt like we could create our own working relationship, and personal relationship. You know how you see athletes and coaches hugging in the Olympics? It’s sort of like that. You work hard, very hard, on a common goal and come to care for and appreciate each other.

While Angel was there I think Giles felt like he had to tow a hard line because HE was being watched as well. Giles was a great Watcher and a great coach. Mine wasn’t the only young life he touched and made better.

 

 

And did you ever saved their asses and get a thank you from them?

 

I never saved Angel’s ass or anything else. During the time I knew and worked with him I was a newbie (haha, or you can say I was a rank amateur. What a great line that was huh?) I looked up to him and depended upon him. His attitude was that I was never lived up to his standards so I don’t think I ever felt I COULD save his anything, and he sure wasn’t ever going to let on that I did him any favors.

Intimidation is sort of a vampire thing. They like to keep you guessing, never let you know what they’re up to. Keep you off guard. Actually, that is the best lesson I got from working with Angel. I learned to stay on my toes. 

Giles saved my ass about a million times. His leadership, research, and coaching made me the Slayer I was. (Well, him AND Wes) So he will never owe me anything.

There were a few times in the thick of things that I saved him, but that was all in a days work. You see some bad thing about to hurt a friend and you jump it and kill it. Overall I am most definitely indebted to him. He never looks at it that way. We were teammates and we took care of each other. Nuff said. 

 

What's making out with Spike like?

I should have seen this one coming. Making out was a thing I did with boyfriends when we were still testing each other out. When sex wasn’t yet on the table, we’d spent time kissing and groping.

I didn’t really do that with Spike. You’ll find out when you keep reading.

We kiss, more about that too.

 

How much are the tv characters like the real people? 

The actors and actresses are all pretty. Sigh. Their personalities are more codified. Meaning they made the characters more like themselves, each very separate and distinguishable from each other. In real life, the lines weren’t so clear.

They aren’t exactly caricatures of us, but a little bit.

Most of us don’t look like the pretty people who play us on TV.

My mom is short and tough like me, not like the beautiful tall, woman who plays Joyce.

I don’t want to go into a lot of specifics because I and everyone else (mostly. I'll bet you can guess who really doesn't give a damn) would love you to imagine us looking just like the people on TV.

Xander looks VERY similar to the actor who plays him.


	3. The One Where I Get Disqualified

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy is all set to compete (and win) when a surprise encounter with a certain vampire gets her into a heap of trouble.

The One Where I get Disqualified

 

 

I trained hard in Track and Field and I’m not complaining, I liked it. OK, so I did complain some at the time because that’s just what we all did…blah blah blah, the coach works us too hard. Truth is, hard work was NOT a problem, never being allowed to win? BIG problem.

 

Giles was worried that if I competed at full power I would draw too much attention to myself, but NEVER winning? How was that not going to draw attention? The other kids on my team who knew I was WAY better in practice than competition, were not very happy with my chronic, debilitating performance anxiety that cost the team points in meet after meet.

 

I wanted a ribbon or trophy as much as the next girl and I deserved it, sure I had natural aptitude, so do most athletes, but I was totally fine with not using my superpowers at full strength. Winning the occasional track meet in no way interfered with Slaying so I didn’t see what the problem was.

 

“I have enough control Giles,” I made my case, “You tell me how high to jump and I will not jump one centimeter higher.”

 

“I don’t think...Buffy...you could win every meet that way, 2/10 of a second faster, 5cm further….We can’t…”

 

“But I’m not talking about EVERY meet, just one meet, one measly event.”

 

By this time Wes had joined Giles on Watcher duty and he weighed in on the issue too.

 

“Controlling your power is extremely important. It IS part of your training. We have you in track as much for that as to work on speed and agility.” Wesley was always quick to remind me of the rule book. I used to call it “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Slaying”. That drove him crazy. The actual title was “Golden Rules for Slayers”. He was a co-author and could get pretty shirty about me making fun of it.

 

“It’s simply not fair Buffy. You’re at a great advantage and we don’t know what your aptitude would be if you weren’t gifted with your powers.”

 

“We don’t know that I wouldn’t have been good,” I pointed out. “And how come I’m only allowed to use my power when other people tell me to?”

 

“It’s called discipline.” Wes was sickeningly smug when he had a virtuous answer he could whip out.

 

“How would you feel if someone told you to do your job with one brain hemisphere tied behind your cranium?”

 

“That’s not-”

 

“Yeah, that’s right,” I poked him in the chest, now I was feeling shirty, “When you were at Cambridge, did you flunk the occasional class. Throw and exam or two just to level the playing field? I mean why should you get to graduate Magna cum Laude? It’s not the other student’s fault you’re a brainiac from a long line of Watchers.”

 

“That’s hardly the same!”

 

“It’s exactly the same! I work just as hard, just as long. LONGER in fact.” I could tell the Cambridge comment was getting to him. “You don’t understand!”

 

“But I do,” Giles piped up. “With my education and training, let’s just say I could be doing something other than standing about with a stopwatch.”

 

He was making a point, I don’t want you to think that was all he did. Giles was a great coach and a dedicated teacher. He was very encouraging and he was especially good at helping his athletes and students identify their strengths and reach their full potential.

 

Much of that stemmed from his Watcher’s training, but he used it for the good of all the students, not just me. He was so good at it that I never thought much about what else he could be doing, and why would I? He signed on for the Watcher’s gig. I didn’t choose to be a Slayer. If he didn’t like it, he was free to leave.

 

That’s what I thought THEN. I knew better now. It’s not that simple. Watchers aren’t handed a steaming plate of superpowers and told what to do with them, but they are sort of called. Being a Watcher is a vocation and a serious commitment. It’s like being a priest or nun. A person chooses to pursue their vocation, they study and train and then they take a vow. Once they take the vow they can’t ever just quit. Something changes and it never goes away. Taking a Watcher’s vow leaves a mark on their soul.

 

But at that point, I thought they were just some smart guys who signed on because they thought it would be exciting and they wanted to be close to the action and destroy some young girl’s life. (literally and figuratively) Most Slayers die in the line of duty and none of them has a normal life.

 

Not all Watchers come from a family line of Watchers, but the majority do. When you grow up around it you get hooked on the atmosphere of magic, mission and saving the world. It’s sort of like cops. Lots of them come from families that have other cops in them. It’s not exactly in their blood, but the aptitude and personality traits are there.

 

It’s the opposite with Slayers. They are never related. Families aren’t cursed with more than one. They’re not required to make the sacrifice over and over. Slayers have no choice in the matter and it’s not good for a family line to keep having their young women wiped out before they can have kids.

 

That’s not the only toll slaying takes. It’s not just hard on the Slayer, it disrupts entire families. It puts family members into the direct line of fire and it wreaks havoc on relationships. Slayers tend not to have happy home lives and long healthy marriages. Numerous Slayers have committed suicide. Several have committed murder. A few have gone insane.

 

The Watchers aren’t there only to teach and train, they watch, keep an eye out for trouble and red flags. Their interference in my personal life wasn’t just them being nosey like I had once assumed. They were concerned. There was a lot to be concerned about.

 

There was already so much on me they thought it a kindness to keep me ignorant of many things behind the scenes. They withheld information so I wouldn’t worry more than I already did, and wouldn’t have even more responsibility and stress on my shoulders. They shared things with me on a “needs to know basis”.

 

Eventually, I wore them down about the track issue. Giles realized I was right and managed to talk Wes into it. They cut a deal with me, I had to prove some freakish level of control in all areas and then they would choose an event and a particular track meet and let me win.

 

Basically, they took all the fun out of it.

 

They checked the competing athletes'' stats to determine what the front-runner’s best scores were, and what I would need to beat. There was still a tiny bit of uncertainty because another athlete might beat their personal best and edge me out, particularly because Giles and Wes were going to keep my margins extremely close. I was tempted (and honestly I can’t even tell you why I didn’t) to just say “screw it” and blow away the competition at least once on my own terms.

 

OK, I DO know why. As much as I resented their interference, I did respect the Watchers and realized I needed them. I wasn’t exactly sure what would happen if I got them truly pissed off. What I did know was that evil was going to keep coming and I needed them on my side. I needed to know how to handle myself.

 

We cut a deal and if everything went according to plan I’d win a ribbon at the meet and a medallion at the end of the season, but I would have to fall short of a trophy. Considering that I’d been competing at a rigged disadvantage to lose for 1½ years I was surprised at how guilty I felt about rigging one, tiny carefully calculated win.

 

I told Wendy that I was going to win the long jump at the meet on the 23rd and I got one of those “is this where I am supposed to be happy for you?” looks.

 

“Congratulations feels premature,” she said.

 

“OK, then you can at least congratulate me for talking Giles and Wes into it. It wasn’t easy and I’ve been training like crazy.”

 

“Will it be fun to win if you already know you’re going to win?” she checked.

 

“Dances are fun even though you know you’re going to dance,” I pointed out. See how good I’d become at carrying my point!

 

“Yeah, OK. Then congratulations!” she said unconvincingly.

 

“It’s not like I’m going to sweep the meet.”

 

“No, of course not.”

 

OK major guilt alert, so I decided to cut my margins just a little more than Giles and I had agreed upon, you know…put at least a little uncertainty into it. Sure enough, I got edged out.

 

“I thought we had an agreement!” Giles was quite fussy about it.

 

I tried to explain how I had talked to Wendy and that I’d made a last minute decision to jazz it up a little. Neither he nor Wes believed me. So then it was all “lack of finesse” this and “lack of discipline” that. And how I apparently thought it was OK to thumb my nose at them and not fulfill my side of the agreement.

 

OK, are you seeing the crazy here? They force me to lose for going on 2 full seasons and then when they agree to let me win and I decide to give the other guy, or in this case girl, a chance (which face it, IS pretty noble of me) they go off on me like I ripped their hearts out.

 

Blah blah, can’t trust me, need to train harder, work on precision. Grrrr. Arrrgh.

 

I had a spotty school record. I’d been caught a few too many times on campus after hours. Once I had a very difficult time explaining why I was in Giles’s office at night when Giles wasn’t there. It was totally on official Slay related business (that time) but that wasn’t something I could exactly get into with the principal.

 

I’d fallen asleep in class a few times, exhausted from Slay related activities, and I’d been accused of breaking into the library, which technically I did, but mostly it was a misunderstanding.

 

OK, so basically I’m on the “watch list” at school and I’d better keep my nose clean. And now I am on high alert with Giles for gross lack of discipline. (I’m talking like 3 cm here.) So, promises were made, allegiance to discipline renewed, and a new date was chosen for me to prove myself and that was when Spike rode into town.

 

By then I had realized that Spike’s visits to Collinsville weren’t entirely random, but I didn’t ask too many questions. You know how on cop shows, the cops always have a couple of informants on the street that they know are getting away with shit, but they let it go because they have an ear to the ground and are willing to snitch. Spike was an informant, sort of, maybe less with the snitching and more with the cooperating when it was to his advantage.

 

In the beginning, I only saw Spike when he was working with Angel or Giles. He’d be at the office or at the very least they would be the ones to tell me he was in town. Then that became with the not so much.

 

I was jogging my cool down laps at the end of practice one evening when I hear a sing-song voice calling “Slayer…” coming from beneath the bleachers.

 

“Slayer…” the voice was keeping pace with me as I moved down the track.

 

“Boo!” he said needlessly when I jogged into the causeway that led from the track to the field house.

 

I cut my eyes around, there was no one watching so I ducked under the bleachers.

 

“Do I want to know why you’re here?” I tried to sound all bitchy and ballsy.

 

“Here in town? Probably not. Here tonight?...” He grabbed me round the middle.

 

“Hey!” I was pretty sure that was where I was supposed to act indignant. I admit, at 17 it did creep me out a little that this old guy seemed so focused on boning me. I was not only creeped out about him wanting to do it but I was creeped out by how much I wanted him to do it.

 

Spike has this thing he does. He cups my cheeks really tight, then uses the heels of his hands to force my jaw down and hold it open. That’s what he did, took hold of my head and took control.

 

He had never done that to me before. Let me tell you when it happens, it’s not so much a kiss as an invasion. (Vamps are all about invasion.) In the next 10 seconds, he made me believe in the thrall (which doesn’t exist) because there was no other explanation for what I let him do, and “let” is exactly the term for it.

 

Technically I might have been able to force my mouth shut, but against the strength of his two hands, my jaw might have cracked. I could have extracted myself some other way, say the traditional knee to the groin, but I was surprised and curious.

 

There is a lot of mythology about the properties of vamp saliva (hence the curiosity.) I expected some kind of rush, like what I imagined heroin would be. Some magical kiss that would make me crave him forever…it didn’t happen.

 

So there we were, under the bleachers, my mouth all weirdly open, and my jaw aching because Spike is not being gentle. Then Spike’s tongue is in my mouth, but not really in a kissy sort of way. I mean, I definitely got a vibe that he was kissing me, but it felt more like he was exploring me. His tongue was not squishy, it was determined and delicate and feeling all around my mouth. It ran over my pallet and the fronts and backs of my teeth, like some weird and very personal dental exam.

 

It felt like he was mapping me. It was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, and I knew that at the same time he was breathing me in, taking in the air that I had breathed out.

 

I wasn’t getting any kind of heroin type rush but I did begin to feel a tingle in a few places, and I began to salivate. I know, gross..right? When things got sort of spitty he let my jaw go, so I could close my mouth and swallow. Again like a dental exam.

 

I stepped back and swiped my hand across my mouth because I was pretty sure I was drooling. I swallowed and tried to give him a stern look. Technically I had kissed Spike once before, but it hadn’t been much of a kiss, just a couple of seconds and very little tongue. He had done all kinds of other wacky stuff with his hands and mouth that time, but he didn’t really kiss me. This wasn’t exactly a kiss, but it came closer.

 

“Where have you been?” were the illogical words that came out of my mouth.

 

“Why? Did you miss me?”

 

Just like the “kiss” is the wrong word for what he’d just done, “miss” was the wrong word for my thoughts and feelings regarding him during our time apart. It might have looked like “miss” from a distance, but up close the details were different.

 

“No, I wanted you.” Now, do you see the difference there? To miss something or someone there had to be a place for them in your life, then when they are gone, you miss them.

 

There wasn’t a place in my life that was Spike shaped, so when he was gone my life bounced along the way it always did. I didn’t miss him. My life wasn’t empty without him, but I wanted him. When I had time and space to think, he would come to mind and set something off in me that would make me think, “Dammit Spike, Where are you?!”

 

He was pleased with the whole wanting him thing. It was better, as far as he was concerned, to be wanted rather than missed. Want was active, miss could be just a passive sad feeling, but when you want something, it niggles at you and keeps you curious and alert.

 

Spike liked being wanted. His face lit up like a Christmas tree, but he didn’t say anything.

 

So stupidly, I thought I should say something, so I said, “Did you miss me?”

 

It was immediately clear to both of us that that was an idiotic notion. Why would he miss me? I was of even less consequence to him than he was to me. Teen girls are a dime a dozen to a handsome vampire. Now I just felt stupid, needy and pointlessly rejected.

 

He seemed to sense it and gave me a minute to get over it. That’s a thing about Spike, he can be very good about letting things pass. He doesn’t hold much against people, he doesn’t bother with grudges.

 

So, he stood there waiting for me to get over myself. Then he cocked his head, considered for a moment and said, “I wanted you.”

 

He said it as if it surprised him, maybe even displeased him. I could see how it might. Vampires are all about taking what they want when they want it, so whatever he might have wanted me for, there were hundreds of other ways he could have gotten his wants met.

 

Now that he realized he wanted me, his brows got all glowery with disapproval. “You’re too skinny.” Track and field training has a tendency to do that to a person. “You’ve got no tits at all.”

 

So yeah, we established he wanted me until he actually saw me all skinny with no tits. He said this like it was a bad thing, ironic seeing as at that time, anorexia was pretty much a fashion necessity. But wait, it gets better.

 

“You look like a 12 yr old boy.” To his credit, he said this as if it was neither a bad or good thing, just an observation.

 

“Hey, some guys like that kind of thing.” There’s me, filling in the awkward gaps.

 

He barely raised one eyebrow which may have been a sign of approval for being a good sport about being told I have the body of a prepubescent boy.

 

It hadn’t stopped him from doing the whole tasting me thing, so at least he didn’t find it disgusting. It takes a lot to weird out a vampire, though, so that’s not really a recommendation.

 

“You smell nice.” He was all back with the compliments and I was back with the saying stupid things to fill in the voids. Hey, maybe I was high on vamp spit and didn’t quite realize it.

 

Anyway, my brilliant response to his compliment was “At least I don’t smell like something peed on me.” Meaning it was a step up from our last encounter.

 

“Some people like that sort of thing,” he noted.

 

My life was of the weird. Blood, spit, guts and all kinds of body fluids and excretions were all in a day’s work for me, (more or less). I had gotten past them being any more than yucky annoyances (with the exception of stinking cat piss). You don’t love it, but it’s just another fact of life. So I wasn’t phased that some people get turned on by getting peed on...but there was something about the look on his face.

 

“Do YOU like that sort of thing?” And again with the dribble of stupid coming out of my mouth.

 

“Depends…” He stepped towards me, “On who’s doing the honors.” leer.

 

I took that to mean that he wouldn’t mind being on the receiving end, but I wasn’t sure.

 

Then he pretty much ran his nose all over my neck and down towards my non-existent cleavage. He gave a happy sigh. That was how Giles found us.

 

“Hello Spike, what brings you back to Collinsville?” Giles all with the clipped and menacing politeness.

 

“Hello, Rupert.” Spike stands straight up and greets him jovially as if he hadn’t been caught with his nose where my tits should have been.

 

“Are you here on business?” Giles went on, then looked at me. “Buffy, finish up and shower. I’m sure your mother will be looking for you.”

 

I’d been dismissed. I knew better than to say goodbye to Spike. I nodded and reluctantly left them. What was said next between them might determine whether or not I saw Spike later tonight, in the next week or never again.

 

I don’t know why I ever thought Giles might actually stake Spike. I guess it goes back to that “needs to know basis”. I knew Spike wasn’t just any old vampire to ME, but I didn’t realize what he was to my Watchers. I really did believe that if he misbehaved they’d stick a piece of wood into him. I also had erroneous ideas as to what constitutes vampire misbehavior to them.

 

Giles was concerned about WHY Spike might have returned. He was not overly concerned that Spike was searching for my lost tits using his nose. Making advances on the Slayer wasn’t big of a deal when put into perspective with the sort of problems that we faced. Considering the potential Spike had as an ally, flirting me was small potatoes. They discouraged it, but it wouldn’t have gotten him killed (wish I’d known that at the time)

 

Most of the discouragement came by means of “scare the Buffy”. If they put the fear of vamp semen into me, I’d protect myself and they wouldn’t have to. I’m not sure why they thought I would fight off Spike’s sexual advances but clearly, they did.

 

I won’t ever forget that night, not only was it the first time Spike did that weird jaw thing to me (he still does it occasionally and I’m still not sure I completely understand it) but it was the first time I rode on a motorcycle.

 

When I emerged from the locker room ready to go home, Spike was waiting for me. I was relieved that Giles hadn’t staked him, but Spike was acting funny, even for him. He was cagey, not nervous but restless and fidgety.

 

“Come on Slayer,” he said to me in a distracted manner. This entire evening had done nothing for my self-esteem. Now it looked like Spike was going to go through the motions because he’d made some deal with me last time he was it town. It was like he owed me one but wasn’t actually interested.

 

Hell no, that was NOT now this was going to go down, so I jutted out my hip, crossed my arms over my lack of tits and said, “I’m not going anywhere with you mister.”

 

He looked confused for a moment, then amused, then like I was a blasted idiot and finally said, “Watcher wants me to give you a ride.”

 

“Ride?” Oh was THAT what they were calling it these days?

 

He rolled his eyes. “Ride home. Home, where you lay your pretty little head.” He began to walk away and since I wasn’t done showing how tough and grown up I was, I followed him, all the way to his motorcycle. I didn’t know he had one until the moment when he got on and motioned for me to do the same.

 

“Uh, nooo.” I had never ridden on a motorcycle and from the looks of that bike, this didn’t look like it was a good time to start.

 

Spike looked at me, gave a heavy sigh, and then decided to take it from the top. “Slayer.” He dipped his head. “Circumstances have arisen that require your Watcher’s immediate attention. So he has instructed yours truly, to give you a ride home before your mum begins to worry.”

 

I was pretty sure he was telling the truth, but part of me wondered if maybe the drained body of Giles was sprawled on the boys’ locker room floor.

 

“I can walk you home if you prefer, but the bike’s a damn sight faster.”

 

“Is it safe?”

 

“Riding with me? Or riding the bike?”

 

“Both.”

 

“No, and most likely, but there aren’t a lot of other options.”

 

“I could run.” I pointed out.

 

“He asked me to keep an eye on you.”

 

“You have GOT to be kidding me.”

 

“If only…” Apparently, he was no more thrilled than I was at the prospect of babysitting me.

 

I wasn’t exactly afraid to ride the motorcycle, but I was afraid of looking like a fool. I didn’t even know how to sit on one. I didn’t like the way he said, “if only” making it clear he found this an odious task.

 

“In front or behind?” I asked.

 

“Behind, watch your hands.” He said it without the slightest hint of snark or innuendo.

 

I put my backpack on, got on behind him, wrapped my arms around his middle and we took off. I was scared for about 4 seconds, after that it was just fun. About 20 minutes in I realized I should have been home 10 minutes ago. I knew WHERE we were, it wasn’t like he’d run off with me. I jabbed my chin into his back to get his attention.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Did you forget where I live?”

 

“Thought you might enjoy the ride.”

 

“My mom…”

 

He nodded and took a right and a right and soon we were at my house. I was about to get off when he said “Wait!” so sharply I stopped dead. “You need to be careful. Don’t touch that pipe there, you could get a nasty burn.” And he showed me how to safely climb off.

 

“Thank you?” I was grateful…sort of. I could have run home faster, so it wasn’t as if he’d done me much of a favor.

 

We stood there looking at each other rather weirdly.

 

“Go in Slayer,” he suggested. I felt rejected again. I could see he was losing patience with me. Then suddenly, “Are you lonely?” he asked me.

 

I thought that was not only a weird question but a highly personal one.

 

“I uh--”

 

“Can’t be much fun. Hanging around with your Watchers…doing what you do.”

 

“I guess sometimes I--”

 

“I thought you’d enjoy the ride is all.”

 

“Well, it was-“

 

He grabbed me, my back to his chest and he pulled my head aside and made like he was going to bite me. But again he started with the whole smelling thing.

 

“You’re not scared of me,” he noticed.

 

I gathered that he had figured that out by my lack of reaction when he grabbed me. Fear does have an odor, even humans can smell it if they pay attention. Maybe he had smelled my fear when he offered me the ride and wondered whether I was afraid of him or the bike.

 

“Occasionally,” I told him. It might have been true. It was true in theory. I allowed there were things Spike could do that were fear worthy, but I hadn’t felt fear for myself regarding him, for quite some time. Still, I didn’t want to insult him. Grin. I was young and stupid. 17 is a strange age, we are very young, yet feel fully adult.

 

“Why do you keep smelling me?”

 

He released me, but in such a way that I truly couldn’t tell you if it was an accident that I bumped against his erection or if he’d done it on purpose. If it had been intentional I doubted it would have been subtle, given how he’d picked me up and slid me all over it in the past. But Spike can be the master of subtlety when he wants to be.

 

He shrugged, unsubtle. “Pretty young girl, mortal enemy…booty call.”

 

“Booty call?” Of course, that’s the one I fixate on. Telling huh?

 

He got that look he gets, you know the one I mentioned where he’s being tolerant and waiting for you to get over yourself and your show of righteous indignation.

 

“Just name the time and the place,” he said in his usual nonchalant way, but his jaw was tight. I didn’t smell fear but I could see that he was wondering if I’d changed my mind.

 

I was wondering if I’d changed my mind too. Heat of the moment makes things easier and we’d had that in Giles’s office. We’d had that then because I was pissed at my Watcher and Angel. But without that to fuel it, and with the level of indignation any 17-year-old girl has and feels duty bound to maintain, there was doubt creeping in.

 

At 16 there was something exciting about getting “taken” by an older man and a wicked vampire. At 17, feeling very much a woman, it would be a decision. I couldn’t blame it on circumstance. Booty call doesn’t happen by accident.

 

“I wish we’d just done it then,” I said sounding both like a petulant child and an old regretful woman.

 

He looked me up and down. “Would’ve been sweet,” he admitted.

 

I know on TV Spike was all Brit Punk Bad Boy with the accent, but Spike hadn’t lived for an extended time in London or England for many years. He’s been all over the world and he doesn’t sound overtly British all of the time. It’s strongest when he’s tired (and when he’s back in England). There are certain things he says that apparently were Brit slang the years he did live there, but that was long ago. He never sounded like Wes or Giles.

 

Spike doesn’t use a ton of modern Brit slang, though he does like “shag” and “brilliant”, both of which he picked up on TV. He has a few weird old “isms”, as he calls, them from his youth (another of his terms). I’ll use some of them in this book because they are so “him”. He likes the saying “all about the place” which for some reason I find all sorts of adorable.

 

He doesn’t curse much unless he’s trying to impress (intimidate) an audience or having sex, during which he utters a number of interesting curses in various languages, all of which are part of his happy talk.

 

Anyway, there we were in front of my house feeling sorry for ourselves that we hadn’t engaged in very inappropriate underage sex.

 

Welcome to my life. I lived for excitement.

 

He rode away on his bike, I went inside and probably groused to my mom about practice, as was expected. She told me my sister would be in for the weekend and that my dad would be dropping her off, so I went out on a limb and said they should all attend the track meet on Sat. I told her I had a good feeling about my long jump.

 

She gave me a very “mom” look because she knew I could blow away the competition any day of the year so I explained that it was just this once and Giles and Wes cleared it and anyway it was starting to look suspicious that I’d never won. I was never going to get a ribbon for placing as Slayer. I deserved one in track and field.

 

So I was all set. I was going to do this totally by the book, not a centimeter more or less than Giles had directed me. I even ate a proper dinner the night before and went to bed on time.

 

Track meets start pretty early and since I was riding with the team, I had to be at the school even earlier. Giles had told me he needed to talk to me about something having to do with Spike, so I arrived at school at 6 freaking AM. There were no lights on in his office but the door was open because it had been kicked in.

 

Spike can be subtle, but he usually isn’t. He was in the office, dozing in Giles’s chair, feet up on the desk. Spike is cute when he sleeps, he smiles a lot, apparently, he has a lot of good dreams.

 

He’d been smoking in the office, tobacco was forbidden on campus, that made two violations. It probably doesn’t need to be pointed out that breaking and entering weren't allowed either.

 

I don’t know what got into me other than garden-variety lust, stoked up by our discussion a few nights earlier and that fresh minted, “look at me, I’m a woman now” attitude I had because I was 17. I went over to him and started to smell and nuzzle him.

 

“I doubt we have the time and shouldn’t you be focusing on the tournament? Get into a zen state?” he asked. It hadn’t taken very long for him to wake up. “Athletes are supposed to remain abstinent, saves energy for the game or some such rot. Stay focused and hungry.”

 

Since we didn’t have time to finish this up, “This will make me hungrier, right?” I reasoned.

 

“It will mess with your concentration.”

 

“And it’s important to be on my A game,” I said sarcastically

 

“Isn’t it? Where’s that Slayer discipline and determination?” He sounded disappointed in me.

 

I was wondering where the vampire lust and “I don’t give a damn” attitude were.

 

Then I realized, dressed in my uniform, I looked even more like a 12 yr old boy than I had the other night. Of course, he wasn’t interested. I’m sure my face registered my recognition. For once he didn’t light a cigarette and wait for me to get over myself.

 

“Dammit.” He was clearly frustrated, not sexually but in the garden variety infuriated way.

 

OK, so feeling spunky and infuriated, mostly at myself for being so bloody stupid, I said what I assumed amounted to “Whatever..I’m outta here.”

 

“Bugger this…” and I turned to go.

 

He chuckled, (he has a chuckle that is out of this world) then he grabbed me and pulled me onto his lap and said VERY salaciously in my ear. “If I did, Luv, you’d have a hard time going out there and running your pretty little ass off. But if you insist.” He ground his erection against me in a way that made me go immediately wet. I was kind of terrified at the speed and power of my reaction.

 

I didn’t know, when I’d said it, that bugger meant anal sex. I just thought it was slang for “fuck off”, or “get outta here”. His reaction made it clear I’d said something more than “whatever” so I asked him “What does bugger mean?”

 

He chuckled again. “It means…” grind grind “you want me to fuck you up the ass.”

 

“Oh…nononononono.” I squirmed away but he was holding me pretty tightly.

 

“I didn’t think so, but it’ll be damned hard to get that image out of my mind,” he admitted.

 

“Guess I’m just an old-fashioned girl.” I wriggled, trying to get away, but also really liking the way he felt under me.

 

“Buggery is as old as time. Don’t kid yourself, when it comes to sex, there’s nothing new.” By then he was nibbling my ear, as well as grinding, as well as his fingers working their way under my shorts.

 

I heard voices, the team was starting to show up, so I hopped off his lap and thought it was probably a good idea to wait outside with the rest of the team.

 

A little later Principal Davis arrived. (not Snyder, who was totally fabricated) Principal Davis was not out to get me. He was a good principal. Very supportive. He made a point of attending at least one competition for each sport, each school year and to travel with the team.

 

Unfortunately, this was track and field’s turn and I reeked of cigarettes, so did Giles’s office which had suffered a breaking and entering. Pending investigation, and because I already had several strikes against me, I was suspended from the team for my possible involvement.

 

Yeah, that wasn’t a pretty morning when my mom received a breakfast call from Giles and the principal telling her I was not only disqualified from the meet, but suspended from school for breaking and entering, possible theft, and smoking on campus.

 

All this happened in front of my dad and sister.

 

My mother and I knew Giles would do damage control and I’d be back in school by Tuesday morning. It would be harder to get me off the smoking on campus charge and it remained unclear what my track and field status would be.

 

Spike had taken his leave by the time Giles arrived, it was nearly Sunrise and he couldn’t be bothered to stay.

 

When I next saw him, a few days later on my roof, Spike was actually apologetic. “I didn’t want to ruin it for you, but you were asking for it.”

 

He had a point. I was the one who started with the nuzzling and then said bugger, even though he knew I didn’t know what it meant.

 

“They really going to kick you off the team?”

 

“I can practice with them, but I’m suspended from competing until further notice. Giles wants me to keep training. He never wanted me to compete in the first place.”

 

“It’s unfair. Giles knew you didn’t break into his office.”

 

“But I WAS in there, unauthorized, his files had been gone through and I smelled like cigarettes.”

 

“Doesn’t look good,” he agreed. “Guess it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d buggered you after all.” He was basically thinking out loud.

 

“Well, hello! Yeah, it kind of would.”

 

He rolled his eyes. “Well, yeah, for you and me but not for the team.”

 

My heart nearly stopped when he said “you and me”, even though he said it in a totally offhand way. The sound of it. The meaning of it. I knew right then, that he thought of us together in his mind. A wave of heat passed through me, and I know I flushed red. It wasn’t a blush of embarrassment, it was more like something fell into place, cutting off the probable and separating it from the inevitable.

 

Spike has a strange way of putting things out there, he thinks out loud a lot. Some people admire him for being honest. I think it’s more like he had no filter, once you understand that it makes him easier to take. Thing is, his stream of consciousness, lack of filter thing, is kind of catching. I would fall into this groove with him of just saying whatever came to mind. So there’s that whole “bugger” thing, and “you and me” thing, just lying out there.

 

“Do you really want to…you know..do that thing?” OK, maybe I’m not so much with the forthright but given the circumstance, the fact that I was willing to discuss it at all was totally the result of his effect on me.

 

So again with the “get over yourself” look of his.

 

Once I got over the stammering and blushing, (he really is patient about that) and I was able to look him in the eye again, he said, “It’s not at the top of the list, but there’s a time and a place for everything.”

 

Which could mean it wasn’t one of the top five sex positions he would like to try with me, or that it was somewhere on the continuum of things to do to a Slayer just before you kill them. I knew it wasn’t the latter because I knew Spike didn’t want to kill me. He would have in self-defense, that was the game and those were the rules, but he would never go after me in cold blood.

 

I realized we were staring at each other, but our minds were miles away. I wasn’t sure where his was until he said, “You should invite me in.”

 

He said it as plainly as someone would say, “you should dry the dishes.” He sounded terribly disinterested, but I was pretty sure I knew what he was getting at. To confirm my suspicion he went on “Can’t risk getting caught in the Watcher’s office. You’re in enough trouble now.”

 

“I’m not inviting you in.” We’d had that discussion. “And don’t start with the limited access thing, I looked it up and it’s a lie.”

 

“Can’t blame me for trying.” He grinned but his forehead was wrinkled from displeasure or maybe it was disappointment

 

“Don’t you have a place?” Yeah, that was me, fishing for an invite to a vamp’s lair.

 

He smoked silently for awhile. “I don’t fancy taking you there,” he finally said.

 

“You have your girlfriend,” I guessed.

 

“Sharing me is one thing, bringing home a bird is another.”

 

Spike and fidelity were not mixy. He’s loyal, he’s not faithful. I could trust him with my life but he’d throw down with whomever, whenever, though apparently not where ever. (well, he would have back then, anyway)

 

“I won’t hurt your mum and sis.”

 

“It’s not just that. I can’t. I just can’t. I’m the Slayer. You’re a vampire. It’s wrong.” I felt there are just some lines you can’t let yourself cross.

 

He lost patience with me then, because this wasn’t a case of me just needing to sort myself out. This was an issue that I wasn’t budging on and it wasn’t going away.

 

“Goodbye, Slayer.” He flicked his cigarette butt away and got up to leave.

 

“What? Wh-“

 

He put up his hand. “There’s nothing more to say.” He wasn’t trying to manipulate me. I asked. He said no. He’d asked. I said no.

 

But I didn’t want it to be over. I wanted to make it work. I wanted to feel him all over me, and get hot and bothered, and have it all be blockbuster movie amazing and not the way it had been with Scott.

 

That’s the thing with a vampire, I could have Scott over when my mom was out and no big deal. Spike was a big deal. Spike was the antithesis of safe sex.

 

A few night’s later there was a track and field trophy sitting on the ledge outside my window. There was no inscription on it but on the plate, he’d written with a Sharpie “# 1 Slayer”

 

I picked it up. I was touched. I was looking it over when I noticed there was writing on the bottom square of marble that the trophy stood on. “Bugger off.”

 

Giles told me Spike had been in Collinsville to trade info with him and Wes. There was a group forming, and he’d give us what we needed to take it down if we’d give him information on a cult in the Yucatan.

 

By the time I heard the details it was clear Spike had already left town. I was more than disappointed, I was hurt. I felt like I’d been smacked down and he was treating me like a child, which to him I was, well, to most anyone I was.

 

First with the “no tits” and “body of a 12-year-old boy”, then leaving without saying goodbye... I wanted him to want me, to long for me. He wouldn’t of course. I was nothing to him. He had all that long history and I wasn’t even a footnote. He’d felt sorry for me like a child because I’d been denied my tournament so he’d brought me a consolation prize.

 

I ignored our conversation about whether or not he wanted to perform said act and where, and I focused on my indignant, broken heart. That felt more appropriate than admitting I was upset not to have gotten sexed up by an evil fiend.

 

He was gone and life would go on. Giles had gotten my suspension lifted and I was back in class. He couldn’t get me off the hook for smoking on campus and I had to write a report and take a “no smoking” mini course. The school would allow me to compete in track and field once the course was over.

 

My mother was SO not happy with me, not just for getting into trouble. “WHAT, young lady, were you thinking of being alone in Giles’s office with that VAMPIRE????” She made a good point. After all, I was supposed to be fighting evil not flirting with it. That was the job.

 

4 nights later, after I was back in school and they told me Spike had left town, I was woken by someone tapping at my window. “I thought you were gone!”

 

“I was. I am. Don’t go running to your Watchers now, far as they know I’m across the border.” He was sitting on the roof, his lips tight which was extremely unusual for him.

 

Part of me wanted to save face, by threatening him or chewing him out. I considered doing the whole eye rolling, what are you doing here bit, but I didn’t want to risk him going away again because he was being patient until I got over myself. If I wanted to, I could be over myself now.

 

I didn’t know how long he might be gone this time, it could be forever…for real. He wasn’t a friend, he was barely an ally. Collinsville wasn’t his residence of choice.

 

He didn’t say any more. He wasn’t going to make a thing of it, and he could easily go on his merry way. I reached out the window, he looked me up and down cautiously.

 

“Come in,” I said. I moved away and he stepped in.

 

He looked things over, went to my door and locked it. He took off his jacket and laid it over my chair, then moved across the room towards me.

 

“Oh…Slayer…”

 

**************************************

 

Q&A

 

Are all the stories in this book true? 

Yes. There are holes because there are stories I chose not to tell for my own privacy or to protect the privacy of others. I have left out or changed some names for the same reason. But all the stories I choose to tell are absolutely true. None are enhanced.

 

Buffy, how many apocalypses have you averted?

This is a complicated question. Many things about the supernatural will be explained later in my story, but I’ll give a quick and dirty answer here.

I have never singlehandedly saved the world from obliteration. I have killed a lot of bad guys and troublemakers and I’ve played a part in plots to take down nefarious plans of big evil.

Over time all those things add up and play a role in avoiding melt down, nuclear, spiritual or otherwise so I’ve played a serious role in keeping the world safe for puppies and Christmas.

In my role as Slayer, I have been honored with the opportunity to do things that prevented many of the apocalypses that we mortal people face in our day to day life. When it’s your own personal world that is ending, it’s pretty much the same to you as if the entire world is ending. Taking out one bad guy prevents the worlds of many individual people from going into a tailspin.

Later you will read about interdimensional interaction. That’s where things get REALLY complicated. Things I (and you as well) do here, have an effect on other worlds/dimensions. Some of my acts as Slayer averted apocalypse for another dimension, sometimes they caused an apocalypse. That butterfly effect thing…it’s real.

 

How many vacations have you had?

Vacation? Seriously? Actually, I’ve been on some lovely trips, many of them related to my work. You will hear about some of them as the story goes on!

 

I'd like to know just how accurately the Spike on tv did his portrayal of your Spike? Because I noticed in this story so far that he seem to share quite similarities to the Spike on TV. 

 

I sense a Spike fan here! No prob, I think he’s pretty wonderful myself. (most days anyway). I’m a teensy bit worried to say too much about my Spike vs TV Spike because I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble or get bags of hate mail.

I’ll tell you a few things, though. The man who plays Spike on TV is incredible. He definitely channels the spirit of Spike. I mean, even Spike is impressed. He doesn’t love all of the writing they do for the character or some of the plots, but as far as the spirit of Spike, the attitude etc he’s very pleased with it. The actor does a great job.

Spike doesn’t look a whole lot like that actor but they are both mind-blowingly handsome.

I guess I’ll say this. Real Spike is like TV Spike on steroids. TV Spike is toned down. But you’ll see that for yourself as the story goes on.

 

I have a question for Buffy...on the show, Joyce hardly ever goes out there's Ted, the band candy fling, and whatever guy she goes with season 5 right before her death (when did she have time to meet this person?)- so in real life did her mom date more? Did she have more of a life outside of being "Buffy's Mom?"

I am actually tearing up reading your question because my mom is the best person EVER and I am the luckiest (along with Dawn) woman to have her as a mother.

I talk about my mom a ton in this book because there is no way I could write a single thing about my life without mentioning her constantly.

My mom didn’t date a lot. That will come up in the book, so stay tuned.

She really isn’t much like TV mom other than both of them being tough and loving. My mom doesn’t run a gallery. She works for a company that sells and designs local advertising. You know those mailers you get monthly with all the local business specials? She does that, and local real estate monthly mags. The company that does all that is national, but she’s a local rep selling the ads and working with the businesses. It was easy for her to transfer from LA because the company she works for has offices everywhere.

When she found out they decided to make Buffy's TV mom run a gallery my mom said, "Well, that's random."


	4. The One Where Spike Does That Thing He Does

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy and Spike take their friendship to a new level. Buffy is 17, if that's considered underage where you are, then this is an underage sex warning. It's not considered underage where I live, so I didn't issue a general warning.

The One Where Spike Does That Thing He Does

 

First off- In real life, Spike doesn’t look the way he does on TV. Hate to spoil it for you, but his hair isn’t, and never was, bleach blonde, though after seeing in on the telly he considered doing it as a lark. (Spike speak for doing something for kicks)

 

As hot as that guy on TV looks with white hair, I didn’t want Spike to do it. Spike’s hair is dark brown, these days he keeps it short, though he says he’s had it “every sort of way” over the years.

 

Like the TV character, Spike is extremely handsome. Big time, serious, toe curling handsome. It kept my mom from trusting him for forever. She said his good looks and charm were working in his favor, earning him brownie points he didn’t deserve. He had to earn her trust the hard way.

 

I know that his good looks did a number on me. His “charm”, as she calls it, he used to a much lesser degree, meaning he didn’t go out of his way to say a lot of suave or nice things to me. Even so, I did very much like the way he spoke to me and treated me. I liked the way he never got flustered, worked up or angry about things I said and did. His whole “give her time” attitude was refreshing to me, even healing.

 

When you’re in a profession where you’re expected to die young, people tend to push you and tell you how there is very little time for anything. Then along comes this guy who doesn’t get worked up, because he knows I need to do this thing, or feel that thing, and process all of it. Spike understood that it was still my life, and whether it was short or long, I had a right to it.

 

Now I’ve invited him into my room and we both know why he’s there. Spike’s not the sort to dither about (another one of his terms) and not do what he came to do. I wasn’t sure what to do next. It’s not like he’s my boyfriend and we can make small talk about school or whatever.

 

How do you initiate sex with someone you don’t know very well and who has 140 years of sexperience? At least I knew that if I got weird and babbly he’d be tolerant about it and likely just take charge and move things along.

 

The first thing I said was pretty stupid, but at least I wasn’t babbling.  
“So how’s this going to work?”

 

He was taking off his shoes. “Your mother never had the talk with you? I thought they taught all this in school these days.” He was pulling his shirt free of his jeans.

 

“Well, I mean I know the basics.”

 

“Well then, we’re halfway there.” He looked at me with a very satisfied smile on his face. Then he pulled his shirt over his head and Holy Hell, there was that body.

 

I made a noise, a little helpless, hungry whimper. He REALLY smiled then.

 

I could tell he was considering taking off his pants, but he didn’t. He undid his belt, removed his socks and came over to me. He cupped my elbows in his hands. I remember that because it was an unusual thing to do, and it brought my attention to the fact that my hands were up, covering my mouth, trying to hold back another one of those whimpery noises.

 

He raised my arms and tugged my shirt off, I had no bra on because I was wearing my pajamas. Now HE made a little noise, apparently, my pathetic boy breasts were so hideous after all!

 

“Lights on or off?” he asked. I didn’t know what to say. I liked looking at him, but things were going to get…you know.

 

“Doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “I can see in the dark.”

 

“Then off, I guess.” I moved away from him and bent down to turn off the lamp on my bedside table. While I was bent over, his arms went round me and as soon as the light was out he had me pulled up against his chest. That was amazing.

 

His chest felt SO good against my back that I probably made that sound again. Nothing against Scott, but Spike’s arms are better. Spike has strong man arms, and strong man hands. He was rubbing his chin against my neck and one of his hands was messing with my boy breasts. His other hand was headed south, it stopped somewhere around my stomach.

 

“Take your pants off,” he said, and he let me go. I did it, then stood facing him. I was about to feel weird about it but he didn’t let me. He pulled me towards him and started kissing me.The kiss wasn’t hard or passionate, but I wanted it hard and passionate. I opened my mouth and immediately he was in it. It didn’t take long for me to open it because I was very turned on.

 

The second my hands clawed at his back he was pulling me that much closer. He didn’t push me or rush me, but neither did he have any inclination to take things slowly. He was going to go as far and as fast as I let him.

 

I was so lust-addled and self-conscious about my lack of experience, that It didn’t occur to me, that Spike was afraid of me. I was the Slayer, She of the Super Powers. I could have hurt him, even killed him. Pissing me off in any way was NOT a good idea. He really wanted this but he also wanted to live to see another day. He wasn’t going to push his luck and say “Give it to me now, bitch.”

 

I didn’t realize that, until years later, when he told me he’d been afraid. He was pretty sure I was as mad for it as he was, but he could tell I was nervous. It was my being nervous that scared him the most. It made me more likely to turn on him, but that isn’t how I remember it. I remember thinking that this was kind of cool. The second I wanted something, I got it. It hadn’t been that way with Scott.

 

There wasn’t a lot of foreplay, and I really didn’t care. It wasn’t like I was going to make him work for it. I was pretty much broadcasting “Damn, you’re hot, would you fucking fuck me already!”, and he was pretty much obliging.

 

Creedo for vampires that don’t have a death wish: Give the Slayer what she wants.

 

I still had my panties on and he still had his pants on and then it was time to take them off. I just sort of stood there while he took his pants off and I was a little freaked when I saw his erection.

 

It wasn’t scary huge or deformed or anything, it’s just that it made this all so real. This wasn’t some crazy make out session, this was happening. Zero to sixty with this VAMPIRE, just like I’d fantasized.

 

Anyway, he was standing there and I was gawking or whatever, then he pulled me up against him, his erection was hard against my stomach. He pressed into me, and I pressed back which was apparently me saying yes to something.

 

He was watching my face when he took my hand and wrapped it around him, and now things got SUPER real.

 

I know now, that he did that because he wanted to be sure I was still on board and wasn’t going to kill him. At the time I thought he just wanted me to touch him. I’m sure he did, but that was only part of it.

 

So there I was with his thing in my hand and it felt weird but good. I don’t mean his thing felt weird because…it’s a very nice thing. It was just weird to be standing in my room holding onto it. He must have liked it because he pressed up against me and wriggled around a little. When I still wasn’t exactly sure what to do he put his hand over mine and showed me. He made some noises that got me super excited and then I couldn’t move my hand anymore because he was pressed so tight against me. He sort of tried to kiss me but he was kind of out of control and that was a huge turn on. Imagine me, getting this super hot vampire guy all worked up and crazy.

 

“Oh god, I have to…are you ready?” NOW he sounded sort of like Scott, a boy begging and whimpering, hoping I wouldn’t say no.

 

“Oh god yes,” I told him. Of course, I expected he’d lay me back on the bed and get on top and you know the routine, but he had other things in mind.

 

I went to lay down and he said “No.” Not sounding like a boy at all.

 

OK, call me confused.

 

“On your knees…”

 

It’s pretty ballsy for anyone to tell the Slayer to get on her knees. It’s practically a death wish for a vampire. I thought for at least a nanosecond, that I should make him sorry he said that, but I decided not to because, so far, everything had been pretty terrific.

 

I knelt on my bed, facing him and he gave me a tiny chuckle and said, “No, Luv, turn around.”

 

And believe it or not I did. He pulled my hips towards him and I fell forwards. There I was, on my knees, ass up and him crawling up behind me when all of a sudden something occurred to me.

 

“Hey, you’re not going to?!!! Because, you know…after all the talk about it the other day.”

 

“How ‘bout we save that for a rainy day? But it’s your fault for putting it in my head, to begin with,” he pointed out. Seriously, was THIS the time to scold me?

 

The next part is pretty clinical. He put his hand between my legs, felt around a bit, slid a finger inside, I guess to check my readiness. He gave a little grunt of delight when he discovered I was, indeed, ready, and then he was rubbing the head of his erection all around, getting it lubed up and lined up. He was holding onto it with one hand and had his other on my hip. “Ready Slayer?” By this time I thought that was pretty clear, but I guess he figured it would be prudent to check one last time.

 

I admit I was a little…worried. I had never done it doggie style, and I hadn’t planned to anytime soon, so I wasn’t mentally ready, but I was SO ready in every other way. I was about ready to die if he wasn’t inside me in the next 2 seconds, so I pressed my ass up against him and said, “Yes.”

 

Then dammit, he said, “Good girl.” I wanted to sock him (because seriously, what an ass of a thing to say) but I wanted him to fuck me, so I let myself get over it.

 

He pushed inside me and there was searing, burning pain. I gasped. “Shhh,” he told me, “it’ll be OK, give it a minute, give it just a minute.” His hand was resting on the small of my back, not moving, just resting there firm and somehow reassuring.

 

For a few seconds, I was raging with anger that he was doing it to me THIS way. Why couldn’t he just do it the normal way which probably wouldn’t have hurt at all? Then I felt a flash terror, in this position he could do all sorts of things to me like choke me, bite me, rape me, shove me down on the bed and smother me WHILE he raped me.

 

Before I reacted to any of those thoughts, he started moving and I about died from how good it felt. Worlds of mind blowing goodness.

 

“Oh Luv,” he murmured. He was moving slowly at first, and I KNOW I shoved my ass up against him. I mean, this was freaking amazing. “You want it?” he said, his voice was low, but it wasn’t a whisper. Spike never whispers.

 

“Yesss…” I wanted it, I was crazy for it. An insane madness had taken me over.

 

He was moving in a slow rhythm, pushing into me with firm, deep strokes. There was still burning. I was conscious of it, but I didn’t care. I just needed him. Lots of him…inside me, faster and deeper and I started moving around and he said, “Hold on, relax Slayer, we’ve got to do this together.”

 

I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant, because how much more together could we be?

 

“You want it faster?” he checked.

 

“Fuck yes.” I shoved my ass up against him for emphasis.

 

“So do I.” He gave that sort of chuckle again. “Come on Slayer, do it with me. Show me how you want me to fuck you.”

 

My brain registered that this guy was saying things to me that I shouldn’t let him get away with, but the rest of me didn’t care.

 

“Oh god, just fuck me.” Wow, was that voice and those words coming out of ME?!!!

 

He took my hips and set a pace, a nice fast energetic one. It was so crazy good that I was biting my lip, and making noises and moving my head from side to side and grabbing onto the blanket. Then, he was driving into me in one crazy long hard deep...THRUST! It hurt enough that I squeaked but he kept pushing in…then he came…all shoved up deep inside me. Deeper than I thought his cock could go. Deeper than I thought anything could go. I could feel every detail, I could feel him getting bigger and bigger, then TOO big, then he was coming...surging inside of me. He was holding me tightly so I couldn’t wiggle away until he was done. It was at that exact moment I realized how strong he was, stronger than I’d ever have guessed from fighting him.

 

It hurt a LOT, but it was OK. The pain was part of it. I had said “yes” and I had wanted this, to feel his lust and strength and power.. and to feel him screw into me until he was done.

 

And then he was done. “Damn that was good.” He pulled back slightly, not out, just far enough that it didn’t hurt anymore. He was leaning over me, panting.

 

I was still ass up, clinging to the blanket. I realized how sweaty I was and wondered how my mother hadn’t heard us and why she wasn’t in here with her shotgun.

 

“You alright?” Spike asked like he’d finally remembered I was there.

 

“Yeah. I think so.” I felt like I was surfacing after being underwater. My head was beginning to clear.

 

“God Damn Slayer, the way you fuck.” Clearly, this was a compliment, though I wasn’t so sure I’d earned it, mostly he’d been fucking me, but the “god damn” part I wholeheartedly agreed with.

 

I felt him shrinking inside me and I pushed up onto my hands and knees. He asked if I had tissues and told me it was going to be messy. (which I hadn’t thought much about. Scott had used a condom)

 

“On the nightstand.”

 

He pulled out and I felt sad. I think I even made a sad sound. It was over, all the crazy, all the sound that had been packed into my head, all the being filled so much I thought I would burst, all of it…over.

 

He handed me several tissues which I shoved between my legs. It stung and smarted. He’d gone at me hard.

 

Then he was stretching out beside me and pulling me to him. I crept up against his body. I couldn’t figure out why I felt this way…like I needed to be up against him. I needed to taste his skin and smell him and press my face into his chest. He yanked me to him and threw a leg over me. I just wanted to be his.

 

What happened to girl power? What happened to “Hey you big jerk, weren’t you supposed to be gentle and loving, and at least do it face to face so I could look at you and push you off of me when you got too forceful” What happened to all that?

 

Instead, I wanted to be plastered against him, or better yet burrowed into his chest. The soreness and burning weren’t making me angry. My body had totally betrayed me because the pain was making me feel grateful and hungry. I was already wondering when I could feel him inside me again. This was wrong. It had to be wrong. It didn’t feel wrong.

 

Spike was holding me close to him, pleased and sleepy. I snuggled closer still. I would have been completely happy to have had him collapse on top of me and smash me into the bed.

 

I’d never understood what people meant when they said “She’s a woman now” when a girl loses her virginity. It sounded condescending and sexist. I wasn’t a virgin, there’d been that time with Scott, but it was nothing like this. I didn’t feel like a woman after Scott and I had sex. I’d felt exactly the same.

 

But now? Here with Spike, I DID feel different, COMPLETELY different. During all the madness something had clicked into place. Now I knew what it was like to be a woman with a man. I let him inside me and I let him take me and I loved it, craved it, wanted it and needed it.

 

My mind had betrayed everything I’d been taught and wanted to believe about myself. Girl power! I was a strong independent woman. I didn’t need a man, not for anything. I could get myself off. I was smart and strong and sexy, but even though all of those things were true... this was true as well.

 

I had never in my life, werefelt that I was where I belonged as much as I had felt it when he drove into me, fucking me, coming inside me. And again here now, tucked against him, his arm and leg thrown over me possessively. I wanted to be here. He had taken me where I had wanted to be.

 

I hadn’t expected any of this. I never even knew a feeling like this existed…but I definitely felt like a woman now.

 

I bit his ear, then his shoulder and in his sleepy haze he growled at me but in a good way. He liked me nipping at him. I bit his shoulder, hard and long, not hard enough to break the skin, but enough mark him as mine.

 

He opened an eye, smiled and kissed my forehead. “You’re amazing, you know that?” he said. And for all that I had felt, one second ago, like I belonged to him, and he had taken me, I now felt perfectly equal to him.

 

He had felt something too, fucking me, coming deep inside me, pulling me close now in this sweaty embrace. He felt something too.

 

We were laying on top of the blanket so I shoved at him and he got up and we crawled back under it together.

 

I had never slept with a man. I mean, sleep as in eyes closed, dreaming with a body touching mine under the blankets. And so another piece fell into place, a sense of belonging. He didn’t hurry away when it was over. True, he might not have had anywhere to go, or at least anywhere with such nice accommodations, but still, that was how I felt.

 

Later, he shook me from sleep. “I have to go.”

 

I felt a shudder of terror go through me…go?

 

“It’ll be dawn soon,” he explained

 

“Oh, yes…right.”

 

“Buffy…” He’d never called me by name before. I’d never heard it on his lips. Instead of saying anything more, he kissed me.

 

“Will I see you again?” I asked in a sort of panic.

 

“Yes.” He said in that voice, the calm “are you over yourself yet?” voice, except he didn’t wait for me to get over myself before saying, “Yes, of course.”

 

I went to sit up and winced.

 

“Sore yeah?” he chuckled, then said in a gentler voice. “There might be some blood, but it’s nothing to worry about.”

 

“You know I’m not…I mean, wasn’t a virgin.” It seemed weird to be whispering that in the dark now.

 

“Yeah, still… I don’t think it was quite like this.”

 

“No, it really wasn’t.”

 

He kissed me again. “Gotta run, the Sun…”

 

“Yes, that’s right…go.” I watched him dress and climb out the window.

 

I hurt, and I had to pee, so I put on my pajamas and went to the bathroom. There was more blood than I’d anticipated. I wasn’t actually bleeding, but there were streaks, lots of them. We hadn’t used a condom. His semen was, dripping out of me, and somehow it was shocking. He was still here inside of me, even though he was gone. I sat there and cried and sobbed, not because I was sad, but because things were different now, so very different and I could never go back.

 

I hadn’t felt that vulnerable in a very long time. I knew that when I went back to my room he’d be gone, but there would be the smell of him on my blanket and sheets and these drops and dribbles of him slipping out from between my legs.

 

I lay in bed for another 2 hours, but I did not sleep. I wondered if I’d ever be able to sleep without him again.

 

 

***********************************************************************

 

Q&A

 

Are all the stories in this book true? 

Yes. There are some holes because there are stories I chose not to tell for my own privacy or to protect the privacy of others. I have left out or changed some names for the same reason. But all the stories I chose to tell are absolutely true. None are enhanced.

 

Buffy, you said Spike was impressed with the guy who played him in the show, how about you? What was your feeling on the actress who played you? Was she like you in personality or was the dumb blond routine total made up? 

 

I’m not sure if you want to know if I’m cool with the actress or with the way the character is written, so I’ll try to answer both and hope I hit on what you want to know.

The actress was great and an incredibly hard worker. When I see what they went through to film that show, I am impressed. My work as a Slayer was definitely more dangerous, but I don’t think I actually worked harder than the actors did if we are talking about hours put in.

The way Buffy is written in the show is quite a bit like me. I’m not as “good” as TV Buffy, and sadly, I’m afraid I was not as good a friend as she was. The Slayer years hit at the very age when people learn how to form critical friendships. I had great friends, but due to my calling, I wasn’t nearly as available to them as I should have been. I had to learn how to be a good friend when I was in my 20’s. I had to learn how to treat people when it wasn’t all about me and my mission.

The dumb blonde thing that you mention, is half true. I wasn’t dumb, but I was often distracted, either by the mission or by me trying to deal with life in spite of the mission. I had a hard time doing both at the same time during the early years. 

Also, during the early years, a lot of information was held back by my Watchers, I was working on blind faith a lot of the time. They kept me ignorant of details, so sometimes I said and did really stupid things simply because I didn’t really know what was going on.


	5. Question and Answer Supplement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Readers had a lot of questions, and the responses got lengthy, so a supplement was added.

In the television show, Buffy drowned in a puddle of water when she went to face the Master? If so, did Xander or someone else need to perform CPR to bring her back

Was there an Acathla? Was Riley based on a real "boyfriend"? Was the "Initiative" a real threat? Was Maggie Walsh real, as well? Was Glory for real, and was Dawn really the "Key"? If so, did Buffy have to jump to close the portal? 

If Buffy jumped, were things like they were in Season 6 the show for Buffy? 

Did Buffy ever abuse and beat Spike just because she was angry with the Scoobies, Giles, or something else? 

First the quick and dirty that will partially answer most of the questions. The TV show was based on reality, but because the dictates of a television show many things were rearranged, changed, mashed together or taken apart. Some of that was due to time constraints, the need to make a cohesive story that spanned a season, many things simply could not be replicated, or the writers felt were too dull or slow to include. 

 

As you continue to read you might recognize bits and snips that the writers cherry picked for the show. 

 

Over the course of MY book, I only go into great detail regarding two or three significant “Big Bads” that had the greatest impact on my life and my relationship with Spike. The reasons for that are explained as you keep reading. 

 

Pretty much, if you’ve gotten to Chapter four of this story, you’ve heard as much as you’re going to hear from and about Angel.

 

Some of the things you saw on TV sort of happened to him, but he and I were never a “thing”, we never had sex and I never killed him, even though I wanted to.

 

Riley was based on a real person. Maggie Walsh was just an annoying professor. I have no doubt something like the Initiative exists, but I was never working directly with or against that organization and that is all I’m going to say about it. 

 

I’m not going to give any spoilers but yeah, uh huh, kinda, oh shit yes, and gulp are the replies to some of your other questions.

 

You will read about portals, death, depression, and life’s hard knocks if you stick around.

 

Not sure if this constitutes a spoiler or not, but it’s a subject close to my heart so I’m responding to it. The TV show needed lots of drama and conflict, and my life DID have that in spades, but it didn’t come in the variety and timing that was needed for a television show. Spike and I have had our moments and misunderstandings but I was never the Buffy who said horrible things to him or beat him up.

 

That part is really hard for both of us to watch because it felt unnecessary. Our relationship had a ton of sadness and pain all on its own without us ever intentionally hurting each other.

 

I’ve done stupid things and things I’m not proud of, but other than a few actual fights in the line of duty early on Spike and I never beat on each other.

 

 

You have mentioned the Watchers and how they were less than forthcoming did you have a bad relationship with Giles and Wesley? Did you get close to Giles like in the show? 

I will address quite a bit of this in the book, especially concerning the flow of information. My relationship with the Watchers wasn’t bad. Wes was more of a teacher, Giles was more of a coach. I never got close to Wes, even though I respected his knowledge, it just wasn’t the vibe.

 

With Giles things were more relaxed, though he did push me hard (read relentlessly). He kept crazy stats on my training. Track and field coach was the perfect cover for him. Lists of times, distances, heights…he was all over that.

 

Things with Giles were very much like they were on the show the first 5 seasons (except he never got fired by me or the Council) They weren’t like S6 or S7 at all.

 

 

How accurate is the vampire lore on the show? Are their strengths and weaknesses accurately depicted? 

Some of it is totally made up, mostly for convenience and drama, and some is true but with caveats. I’ll jump in and hope I hit the main points.

 

Dead or undead:

Vampires aren’t brought back from the dead. They never actually died. It’s a bit like a caterpillar in a cocoon. They give the appearance of being dead, so convincingly that some were buried and did have to claw their way out of the ground. Usually, when a vampire turns someone, they don’t leave the body lying around for the family to find. Most vamps are turned for a specific reason and never go through burial.

 

It’s uncommon for a vampire to go around turning people willy nilly (Spike's word). Most predators aren’t keen on creating more competition for themselves when it comes to hunting. It’s much more difficult in modern times for a vampire to safely hunt and feed, so it’s even less common now for them to turn someone without a heck of a good reason. You will find out some of those reasons in the book.

 

Eating/Feeding:

Vampires don’t HAVE to do all the things normal people do. They can go into suspended animation for very long periods of time where they don’t need to breathe, eat, etc. They look dead but they don’t rot. What does happen is they dehydrate over time, and to be brought back need to be rehydrated. Vampires will do that for one another…sometimes. Again, with the not wanting to share limited hunting resources.

 

Vampires eat, drink, use the bathroom etc just like us, but because they don’t maintain the high body temperatures that humans do, they don’t need to eat nearly as much. They CAN, but they don’t have to. 

 

They have blood lust. Spike says it’s similar to not being able to catch a breath, if you are human. It makes you panicky and desperate. You stop thinking about anything else and all you can focus on is getting a breath. 

 

They don’t NEED to have a huge amount of blood all the time. They may feel the panic/lust, but they aren’t as desperate for blood as it feels. An experienced vampire understands that, doesn't panic and can control the blood lust for a long time, until the situation actually gets desperate, then instinct takes over. 

 

New vampires don’t know this and go off half cocked on killing sprees. Like most lusts, if you do nothing to control them, they will control you. 

 

They can live off any bird or mammal blood. They have preferences, that vary from vamp to vamp. The jury is still out on whether or not they can live on nonhuman blood indefinitely. Spike doesn’t think it’s possible. At least not for him. He can be (can being the operative word) very disciplined but at some point, the bloodlust gets the better of him and he needs human blood. 

 

Without human blood, their bodies break down more easily. Basically, they wear out without the input of human material to replace worn out bits. Not having human blood can age them more quickly and make them sort of crazy. 

 

Except when they go into suspended animation, either by choice or circumstance, vampires DO breathe and do have a pulse. It's generally quite slow. When they are active their body temperature rises and they need more food/blood/air. 

 

Strength and senses: 

Vampires are stronger than average humans, but they can’t run up walls or leap over buildings. They can see much better than humans can in the dark. They have heightened sense of smell but not to a wacky degree. Better than human, not as good as a dog or bear. Their hearing is about what it is for humans when they are very young. People begin to lose their ability to hear high frequencies very early on in life. Spike can hear better than I can, but he can’t hear a heartbeat in the next room.

 

What sometimes makes it SEEM like their senses are more powerful than they really are, has to do with their brain processing. Every animal’s brain has certain things it focuses on, and certain things it filters out. There is SO much stimuli in the world that if all of it registered and the brain tried to process it, there would be no brainpower left for anything else.

 

So, while Spike’s hearing isn’t super powered, his brain does this thing where he can focus his hearing resources on a certain type of stimuli. Humans can learn this to a certain degree as well. It has to do with pattern recognition. You can train your eyes and ears to pick up on certain things. 

 

You know how the buzz of a bee immediately gets your attention, even if there are louder noises around? It’s like that, when Spike is listening for something, in particular, he can filter out the static and focus only on what he needs to hear. Same with smell and sight. It’s like tuning a radio to a certain station.

 

Dusting/killing:

Vampires DO dust. (their clothing doesn’t dust with them) Dusting doesn’t happen instantaneously. Their body will turn to dust, usually within an hour, longer in rainy conditions. There is a lot more dust than it looks on TV, but that’s ok because you’re not getting a face full of it.

 

It is very hard to drive a stake into a chest. Much harder than they make it look on TV, plus the heart is about the size of a human fist, that is a small target. The heart is mostly protected by the breast bone. It’s not as far to the left as most people think.

 

Even a strong person can’t drive a broken broom handle through the breast bone. The amount of force needed is shocking and most types of wood would break. Good strong stakes need to be made of certain types of fine-grained wood.

 

If you don’t have any of those around, there is an alternative, you go up from below and avoid the rib cage. Enter somewhere around the kidney or liver and drive forward and up through the soft organs and into the heart. A broken broomstick works just fine.

 

Holy Water melts vampires, it’s messy and disgusting. There’s a lot of screaming and steam and it smells gross. Sort of like burning hair but moldy at the same time. It takes a LOT of Holy Water to actually kill a vampire. Mostly it leaves them with bad burns that take a long time to heal and leaves nasty scars.

 

Vampires do scar, so in that sense, they do physically age.

 

Sunlight burns them/melts them, and ultimately will reduce a vampire to dust. It’s not instantaneous, but like Holy Water, it causes a lot of pain and damage and can leave horrible scars. A vampire stuck in Sunlight will die a horrible death. 

 

They can be killed by taking off their heads. 

 

Bats: 

The bit about vampires turning into bats etc. is based on a different kind of demon which also sucks blood but was never a human to begin with.

 

Health issues: 

Vampires do sweat from exertion. Because of their low body temperature, very few human diseases are able to use them as a host. However, they are prone to fungal infections. Spike says that has to do with not being able to be in the Sun where the UV rays would kill the fungal growth. Taking activated vitamin D pills clears most of those infections up. Another cure is something Spike says has been around since his day, it's a liquid called gentian violet. It has a lovely purple color but it stains the skin and takes a bit of time to wear off. 

 

One of the reasons Spike sleeps in the nude is to allow time for his skin to be exposed to air and dry out, it helps prevent the fungal infections. I hope this isn't too much information, but you did ask. 

 

Because of Spike’s (and all vampire's) slow metabolism, he is actually MORE susceptible to the effects of alcohol. He enjoys wine with meals, but if he drank like the character on TV he’d basically be blacked out and nonfunctional all the time. The nicotine in cigarettes is a stimulant, he get’s a rush from it, an energy boost. Things with caffeine do that too, but again, he has to be careful not to over do it or he gets too jittery. 

 

Sex: 

The famous vamp stamina! Is Spike lustier than the average man? In my experience yes, not insanely so but he likes a steady diet of sex. He says that all men want it as much as him but aren’t as good as getting it or have their pesty consciences keeping them from acting on it. 

 

Stamina goes back to the metabolic rate. Put Spike on slow and he probably could have sex for 5 hours straight, but as he puts it, why the hell would he want to? What’s the bloody fun in that?

 

And who the heck would want to have sex with him for 5 hours? I adore him but seriously? Get a life dude.

 

He has quicker rebound than most men, and can get more erections in a row but again...why the hell would he want to? He says it would be like eating 10 pizzas in a row. Spike’s done all kinds of things over the decades and he has done the sex marathon thing and swears it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. He proved his point and isn’t interested in a repeat. He says he prefers many separate encounters rather than one long tiresome one. 

 

He’s the only vampire I’ve ever been with, and I am sure they differ in preference just like humans do.

 

Do vampires have souls? 

Souls aren’t some neat distinct thing that something has or doesn’t have. You can’t put one in or take one out like a battery. Spike has as much of a soul as any human.

 

Thing is…and this is important. Mortality is a force which drives a great deal of human behavior. Death is the ultimate consequence for most people (at least in their minds and bodies). Most of us won’t ever know what we would do when it really came down to the line in a life/death fight.

 

A lot of what we attribute to a “soul” has to do with us being mortals and trying to get by in a civilized society.This is less of an issue when you are a vampire because with a bit of cunning you have the potential to be around for a very, very long time. Things that mattered before, and that you had to talk yourself into doing or not doing, don’t matter the same way.

 

Spike acts “soulful” regarding things that are precious to him and have limited availability. He’s irreverent about nearly everything else. He can afford to be.

 

He does agree that, to an extent, the soul has to do with the spark of human dignity. As the result of the myriad things he has seen (and done), his faith and belief in that spark, and human dignity is shaky, hence his tendency toward irreverence.

 

Knowing him as long as I have, I’d describe him as cautiously optimistic and morally pragmatic. Getting the job done is more important to him than right or wrong. Still, some method of judgment had to go into whether or not the job is worth doing. It’s a chicken/egg argument that he and I go round and round with.

 

Buffy, how tall is Spike? Is he like as tall as the actor version of him or did you have to look really high up just to see his face? 

I am two inches taller than the actress that played me on TV. I am 5’6” (168 cm) tall. Spike is only a few inches taller than me. (he prefers I don't give his exact height) He was slightly above average height for men of his time, which is low average for men these days.

 

He often comments that men today are the size of a giant but have the sense of a gnat. It’s kind of a play on words, well, at least written words because giant and gnat have the same letters. He likes little things like that.

 

He’s about the same height as Wes, shorter than Giles and quite a bit shorter than Xander. Xander is about 6’1” (185 cm) which is tallish for a man.

 

Spike and I fit together quite nicely!

 

What did you think or feel when you saw that the show made Angel be your first love? 

In the original book (The collaboration) there was very little detail about our personal relationships. The show was based on that, so when they chose Angel as Buffy’s first love, it wasn’t that big of a deal because it was fabricated. The actor who plays Angel isn’t much like the real Angel so there wasn’t much of an “ewww” factor.

 

I watched it and it was sort of fun/funny. Then it got sort of stupid and overdone. But that is television writing for you. They had to appeal to the teen heartthrob vibe.

 

I would like to know what Spike's opinion was. 

The idea of my (our) life being turned into a television program disturbed him at first and he didn’t watch the show. Once they introduced his character he began to watch regularly. 

 

When Buffy was involved with Angel he referred to her as “that young girl” and didn’t use my name. He does that whenever the show went someplace he didn’t like, he distances the characters from the real people by not using our real life names.

 

Spike said that young Buffy on the show was quite a bit like me and truth is that Spike was the one knocking on my window when I was a young girl in high school sooo…if you do the math, that was more like my real life relationship with Spike than Angel.

 

Spike says, at least he was worth opening the window for. 

 

Was he angry because Angel in the show had been like the reason his character never got a chance with Buffy? 

Well, Spike does have the luxury of knowing he got me in the end! He blames the writers, not Angel (real or pretend) as the reason Spike and Buffy never ended up together in the program. The writers of Buffy weren’t about happy endings. 

 

Or did he react differently? 

The Buffy/Angel (I’m almost tempted to say Bangel) relationship was so cocked up (imaginary) that it didn’t bother him much. He was much more reactionary when the show began to portray our relationship.

 

He LOVES the way they introduced him on the show and the way he and I met because it’s not that far off from the truth. We were originally enemies that ended up working together. 

 

He thought the parts where Buffy and Spike bantered etc was fun, but once things got nasty…the beating each other and all that, he hated it. He said that when they were frenemies (no, he does NOT use that word) that even though it wasn’t exactly like real life (but there are similarities) it was fun to watch.

 

Some of the fan's favorite episodes are the ones he hates the most. Don’t even get him started on “Something Blue”.


	6. The One Where Spike Does That Other Thing He Does

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after the night before.

The One Where Spike Does that Other Thing He Does

 

Good thing I was still disqualified from competition. I went to the school the next morning and rode the bus to the track meet to cheer for the team. I wasn’t limping, but I was moving slowly and with considerably less grace than I usually did. Slayer super healing is real up to a point, but it doesn’t work nearly as fast as it did on TV. I’m more human than that. Injuries hurt, and they took time to heal. Not as long as it would for you and the bag boy at the grocery store, but actual time. In other words, I wasn’t always fight ready by the next episode.

 

I didn’t exactly mind the stinging soreness. It cemented the fact that what had happened with Spike wasn’t just another lusty dream. It also cemented the fact that there were these pesky things called “morning afters” and things called consequences, such as “Oh god, what have I done?”, “Will he call me?”, and “Ow”.

 

Giles noticed that I was walking oddly. “Did you patrol last night? Did you fight?” The concern in his tone was real. I did sometimes patrol alone, though not often. He didn’t like me to, and rightly so. Vampires and demons aren’t all stupid gits. (Giles’s word). A gang of them could do some serious damage to me.

 

“Nah, just…pulled something…Tai Chi, go figure.” Sheepish smile. It wasn’t unusual for me to pull something doing Tai Chi, mostly because I did it wrong and partly because I was used to moving fast. Slow exercise requires a different kind of strength. Patience has never been one of my virtues. Good thing I had my Watchers to strategize, Wendy to do research, and Xander to watch my back, because I was all about the going in to beat something to death, and not so much with the subtle.

 

Giles accepted my explanation and returned to his chart of times and events. I did some stretches. I chose stretches that weren’t going to make my girl parts hurt too much, but I got a weird little thrill when they did hurt. The ache brought a frown too. I didn’t know how to put what happened with Spike into context. Maybe there was no context. My first one night stand…whoo hoo. I’m all grown up now. Go, Team!

 

When I got home from the meet, Mom and I drove to LA to see my sister in a dance performance. She was graceful and beautiful. I was jealous, her skill and athleticism were art, mine was violence and killing. She was confident in just about everything. The only thing I knew I did well, was fight.

 

My sister said she didn’t have a boyfriend, she claimed she didn’t have time. One, I didn’t believe her, and two, if it was true, that was a better reason than why I didn’t have one.

 

We had a very nice late dinner, then Mom and I drove home.

 

“I’m bushed.” My mom said.

 

“You could have let ME drive.” I pointed out…again.

 

“Not on the expressway YET… the drivers are so aggressive. I don’t think being the Slayer gives you have enhanced driving skills. You’re still a regular 17-year-old girl in every other way,” she reminded me.

 

She reminded me of that a lot, and it was more accurate than I wanted it to be. Her saying it now, after my night with Spike, made me want to burst into tears again.

 

Of course, that would only prove her point. Grown women don’t cry repeatedly just because they had sex. I was just a girl, a stupid, hopeful girl.

 

“Goodnight honey.” Mom kissed me and gave me a hug. “I’m so proud of both of my girls. No,” she corrected herself, “Young women.”

 

“Dawn was great. Really great,” I agreed.

 

“What happened to you...being disqualified from the track meet. I know it wasn’t fair, and we were all very disappointed we didn’t get to see you compete.”

 

“And it’s not like you can watch me…slay things or whatever,” I added, with a shaky laugh.

 

“Buffy, I know how hard you work. I do wish you had more time for...everything. But you won’t be the Slayer forever. There are things you can put on hold, like boys. But not your education. Not friendships.”

 

“Yeah, well, Giles kind of owns me right now and he’s not so much with the boys.”

 

“And I think he could do better with the education.” My mom put her arms across her chest, trying to hold back a diatribe about Giles’s plans for my life.

 

“He’s all about education, he just…has chosen some weird subjects for me,” I said in his defense.

 

She sighed, she didn’t have the energy or interest to get riled up about it tonight. We had a good happy going on. We’d spent quality time with my sister, had a nice drive home, singing to the radio, shooting the breeze, and NOT bringing up “Mom…something happened..”

 

I didn’t know why I wanted to tell her. It made no sense. Why did I want to tell her?

 

“G’night.” She hugged me again, I watched her disappear into her room.

 

I went to my room to grab my jammies so I could get ready for bed. I stopped at the door. I was hesitant to go in there, in the dark. Everything came rushing back to me. Not the details of what we did, but the feelings. The crazy want, the overwhelming need and then…what was that feeling afterward. Love? Belonging? I’d never felt that.

 

I put on the overhead light, hitting the switch by the door. I hated that light but I didn’t want to be in the dark, even for the few seconds it would take me to cross the room to turn on my lamp.

 

Great…a Slayer who’s afraid of the dark. This will look REAL good on my resume. Another one of those wacky consequences that I couldn’t have predicted in a thousand years. Made sense though, didn’t it? That’s what happens when you get naughty with a creature of the night, you end up afraid of the dark.

 

I went to the bathroom and did my routine. Makeup off, wash face, put hair in a ponytail, pee, take my vitamin and calcium supplement. Then it was time to return to my bedroom where eventually the light was going to have to go off and I was going to have to go to sleep. Why was this scarier than sneaking up on some evil thing lurking at the Fissure to Hell?

 

I did it.

 

Once the light was out, but before I managed to crawl into bed there was a tapping at the window. My first thought was NO. OMG, NO. I can’t do this again. I can’t. It will only make it worse and I can barely stand this.

 

The window inched up…three inches, six inches, 12 inches. Spike ducked his head down, “Can I come in?”

 

Well, he already had an invitation. It wasn’t like I could keep him out.

 

It inched up another four inches. “Buffy? Can I come in?”

 

His using my name undid me. I went over to the window and raised it. “I already invited you in.”

 

“That was last night. I’m not going to come barging in any time I please. I won’t come in unless you ask me.” He sounded offended.

 

Again, this was most likely because showing up unannounced in the Slayer’s room is asking for it. “It” being total annihilation.

 

Still, I was touched. Not only had he asked to come in, but he used my name, meaning…he came in peace, meaning... he came to see ME, not the Slayer, not on business, not itching for a fight.

 

I stepped back. “Yes, you can come in.” He hopped in light as a feather and reached for me. I flinched and instantly hated myself for it.

 

I know he frowned, but I don’t know how I know because the lights were off. Maybe it was the tiny puff of breath he released, and because I know him so well now, that when I think back on it, I realize he was frowning.

 

He reached for me, but slowly now, and instead of pulling me into his space, he stepped into mine. Brought himself to me. “Hey.”

 

Then I was against his chest, my face pressed to him, and he was holding me. I don’t know if I had mashed myself against him or if he had pulled me to him, but it didn’t matter because I was there and he was glad I was.

 

“Are you OK?” he asked, saying the words very carefully, desperately hoping the answer was yes, but prepared to accept if the answer was no.

 

“Yeah.” I was now. He was there.

 

“Good.” Total relief in his tone. If he’d had any concern that maybe I wasn’t OK, it was pretty stupid for him to have come to my room and taken the chance that I might invite him in and skewer him. He didn’t have to come back. He didn’t have to take the chance. The fact that he was a vampire pretty much explained any bad behavior. He could always default to “Well, what did you expect?”

 

He sat down on the bed and pulled me onto his lap. “You were out late.” Apparently, he’d been waiting for me.

 

“Went to LA with my mom...Were you here?”

 

“For a bit…a long bit.”

 

“I’m still…kinda sore.” I wanted him to know that there wasn’t going to be a repeat performance.

 

“Yeah, sorry bout that. It’s not why I’m here.”

 

OK...so yeah, that was a good thing, because I was sore, and because it meant there was something wanted from me besides sex. Still, part of me was insulted. What did he mean he hadn’t come back for that? Wasn’t that good enough for him to want it again, very soon?

 

“Oh.” I’m sure that “oh” spoke volumes.

 

I could feel his face draw into a grin against my cheek. A tiny part of me realized that I was thinking crazy. I knew nothing he said or did was going to be enough to address these things I was feeling but had no name for and no understanding of.

 

I hated him because I knew he was being patient with me and my feelings. I was confused, angry, and possibly sort of in love with him. It was so unfair that having sex with him made me feel like I was sort of in love with him. How could my body and mind betray me that way?

 

“Can I kiss you?” He sounded for all the world like a sweaty-palmed boy. I mean, how absurd is that? After what we did, NOW he asks if he can kiss me?

 

For a few seconds, I wasn’t sure if he COULD kiss me. I didn’t know how I felt about it. I guess it made sense that he’d asked because if I didn’t know, there was no way he could have.

 

I turned my face towards him and he kissed me. It wasn’t a sexy kiss, more than a peck, but not much more. And there went my brain, crashing down a steep incline. What was this? The kiss off? Didn’t he even want to give me an actual kiss? What was wrong with me?

 

“You’re not OK,” he said.

 

I buried my face in his shoulder. “No,” I admitted.

 

He didn’t apologize, and honestly, it wasn’t his fault. I had been right there with him.

 

“Buffy.”

 

He wanted me to look at him, but I was afraid of what he’d see there. It wasn’t just that he had night vision, it was as if he had Buffy vision, he could see what I was thinking and feeling...things I wasn’t able to put into words. Things I needed him to know. I looked at him.

 

He studied my face a minute. “You are OK,” he said, not like he was commanding me to be, or asking me to be. He was just a stating a fact.

 

He was right. What I was feeling was something big and important, but it wasn’t wrong. I was sore. My mind and my heart were as sore as my bottom, but there was no damage. I just needed a little time.

 

He kissed me again, and it was a real kiss. Not a sexy one, but very nice just the same.

 

“I think you ruined me for other men,” I said. It was a thought that had first occurred to me the night before, during the act itself, I thought wow, it will never be this good again. It had occurred to me several times during the day, including twice during my sister’s performance, and at least three times on the drive home.

 

“Someone was bound to do it sooner or later.” He’s so damn pragmatic.

 

“Maybe later would have been better than sooner.” I thought out loud. I was young, I had a lot of years of sex ahead of me and it was depressing to think that my first time would be my best time.

 

“Maybe,” he conceded. “But it was just that one thing, there are lots things we didn’t get to. Some other bloke will get the MVP trophy.”

 

My heart more than sank, it exploded, then sank, then bobbed back to the surface so it could sink again. “Yeah, maybe.” He was probably right. He couldn’t hold the record for something he hadn’t done.

 

“You’re not sorry.” Again, it wasn’t a question. He was stating a fact like he knew my mind. I wanted to contradict him, but no, I wasn’t sorry. I would never BE sorry. At some point down the line, when I got my head and heart sorted out I was going to be even less sorry and think, Hot damn! That was amazing, it was one of the best things ever!

 

He knew that already because he’d been around so long. He knew that things just took time. What’s more, he believed I had time. He didn’t expect me to die in the line of duty. He expected me to have a long life with time to process this, and make wonderful memories and to have a long list of lovers that I’d have mind blowing sex with. He managed to wrap all that up in three words. You’re not sorry.

 

“Giles and Wesley, they don’t really let me date.” He probably already knew this.

 

“Still, you only have a few years left. What are you? 18?”

 

“17.” I hated how small my voice was when I said that. It sounded more like I was 7.

 

“If you make it to 18, you’re home free,” he said, which I thought was weird.

 

Obviously the fact that he’d had sex with a 17 yr old when he was…well, I didn’t even know how old he was, I mean in people years...But even in people years, he was a lot older than me. He didn’t feel any sort of remorse for screwing some hot young thing. But why would he? And why did he assume that somehow the Slayer gig would be a breeze once I hit voting age?

 

“Why do you say that?”

 

“You’re good, you’re smart. You have two excellent watchers…You’ll be your strongest and well trained…a damn lethal weapon. Most Slayers die young. VERY young.”

 

“Or right near the end,” I corrected him. I knew the stories. I’d read the Watcher’s diaries.”

 

“Yeah…but that’s different. They don’t get killed because they’re not good. They get reckless…They’re ambivalent, don’t know what they’ll do with themselves. Don’t know if they can give up the Slayer gig and have the guts to live in the real world.”

 

What he said didn’t make sense. Who wouldn’t want to live a NORMAL life? Who wouldn’t be thrilled to hang up their stake and go to college, or have a career or get married and have children? What kind of crazy person wouldn’t want that? He had to be wrong. They were killed because they had either peaked and were starting to fall in physical ability. Or because they’d gotten too cocky and thought they were invincible.

 

“All I want is to live in the real world.”

 

“Hold that thought. It will keep you alive.”

 

Here he was again, god damn him, talking to me like I was a real person. Talking to me truthfully, not in lies or veiled words or threats and predictions of doom.

 

“But you love it too…being the Slayer,” he went on.

 

“Well, some days…” But not today, not tonight.

 

“You love being fast, strong…” His hands moved to my biceps as if he was testing them for strength.

 

“Killing things…” I smiled.

 

“Being important,” he said definitively.

 

That was something I’d never owned. I did resent being chosen, without being asked, but…it was pretty amazing to be THE one. To be important, like crazy important.

 

I snuggled close to his chest. “I like you…why do you know so much?”

 

“You don’t want to know Luv…”

 

“Don’t patronize me.”

 

“I’m not. I don’t,” he argued.

 

“Then tell me.”

 

“Bloke’s got a right to privacy,” he said. I felt a niggling sense of doubt. If he wasn’t telling me, it was probably something bad. He had a whole long history, a lot of which was bad. Very, very bad. I was like one of those women fascinated by a serial killer.

 

“Buffy, I have to go.”

 

“Already?” I heard the panic in my tone.

 

“I don’t mean this minute…but I have to GO.”

 

“Oh.” That “oh” again, that could have easily been followed by “shit”.

 

“Back to your ho bag girlfriend.” My words came out SO spiteful.

 

“To be fair Luv, I never left my ho-bag girlfriend.” His tone belied that he was slightly amused. “You know what I am…and what you are.”

 

So damned pragmatic. Here it came, the inevitable brush-off, It’s been nice, but sayonara.

 

“You vampire, me Slayer…” I said what was expected of me.

 

“Well, that too…”

 

“What else is there?” I mean duh…that was the big why this can’t happen.

 

“We both have a job to do.”

 

“You vampire, me Slayer…” I repeated.

 

“Me Tribunal liaison, professional bad guy…boyfriend…” Yeah, he just had to slip that in there. “You Slayer, student, daughter…would be track star…”

 

Somewhere in there, my brain was ticking…wait, did this mean that if all that wasn’t true, there would be something here? Something that could happen?

 

“Great, so maybe look me up in 5 years..” I tried to sound lighthearted, but again with the spite, sarcasm, and fear. Fear that I might not be here in 5 years. Fear that I might not have made any progress in life, and that in 5 years the best I could hope for was that some vampire would take pity on me.

 

“I won’t be gone THAT long.”

 

“That’s right. I’m sure your job will bring you back to the Fissures of Hell.” Duh, well, of course it would.

 

“Something like that.” I caught the exasperation in his tone. He knew that no matter what he said I wasn’t going to believe him. I had already categorized “us”. He might be able to wait out the process, but I couldn’t. I had to make sense of this NOW, this instant, and it had to be clear and definitive. There couldn’t be any “wait and see what happens next”, not for me.

 

He sighed, and kissed me again, and pushed me back onto the bed. I could feel myself wanting him, feel my rising desire. I wanted my brain and heart to stop aching for a little while. I wanted to forget, and he could make me forget, but he was just kissing me.

 

“Fuck…” he cursed. “I want to…”

 

I tensed up.

 

“No, not that. Well, OK, yeah that, but it wasn’t what I meant.” Well, score one for me, at least he DID want to fuck me, that was a relief.

 

“You’re OK,” he said again, letting out a puff of breath. He said it like he was reminding himself.

 

“Sounds like you aren’t,” I noticed.

 

He had a silent laugh at his own expense. “You might be right.”

 

I liked being pressed to the bed, beneath him, having this veiled conversation. His weight on me confirmed that this was real. That, in this moment, we were real.

 

“I’ve never been this close to a man.” The words squirted out of me, as if the weight of him had forced them out. He looked surprised.

 

Scott wasn’t a man and the night before, Spike and I hadn’t been face to face like we were now.

 

“What have I done?” he said. I guess the pressure was forcing words out of him too.

 

I didn’t want him to look that way, to SOUND that way. I couldn’t bear to be nothing but a regret to him.

 

“If there’s anything I’m good at it’s getting myself into a pickle.”

 

Wait, what? He wasn’t feeling regret for doing something to me?

 

“I have to go…be me. And you have to stay here and be you.” He said it like we were making some kind of deal. But he didn’t say the next part. The part where you find out what the reward for “being” was. He was just stating facts. Maybe he didn’t know what the reward was, or if there would be one. He wasn’t going to say something he didn’t feel sure of.

 

He wasn’t going to say anything about us. Or anything about what would happen when each of us, being who we were, ended up face to face again. But then it really wasn’t his place to say, or to make presumptions.

 

“Can I stay here tonight?” he asked.

 

My face must have said yes. He smiled, got up, undressed then went to the other side of the room and locked the door. I watched him, not knowing what else to do. He came back to the bed and pulled down the covers. He made a motion like he was inviting me in, ushering me under my own blankets.

 

Naked man, naked vampire, just standing there waiting for me to get into bed with him. This is who you are now Buffy, click, clink…another bit falling into place. This is who I was now. One of his women, a consort to a vampire.

 

I was too young for this, not ready for this. I wasn’t supposed to be sharing my bed...not with a naked man who was going to sleep beside me. I was still in the furtive “sex on the sly, then everyone goes home alone” phase.

 

This was something new…something wonderful. He was here, and I didn’t have to be alone, feeling awkward in my own bed, and wondering why.

 

Tomorrow I probably would be alone, but I would know why...because he had to do his thing and I had to do my thing, and not because he didn’t want to be with me. When he was here, he was with me.

 

So I got in and he got in and pulled me up against him. He nuzzled my neck and put his hand over my hands, holding them together as if in prayer.

 

“Thank you,” I whispered.

 

“For what?”

 

“For coming back.”

 

“You’re welcome?” Of course, it was a question because my thank you didn’t make sense to him.

 

“I mean…”

 

“Let it be, Luv.”

 

I wondered if he called everyone Luv, was it just his thing? He didn’t love me. I knew that. I didn’t love him either.

 

“I’m glad you’re here.”

 

“So am I.”

 

“I didn’t think…” clearly I wasn’t letting it be. “I mean before…when we almost…”

 

“It was different,” he stated.

 

“But how?” He was right. It WAS different. Very, very different. I wondered if we had gone through with it a year ago, would I feel like I did now?

 

“Because that was before, and we didn’t know how it would be.” He kissed the back of my neck, under my ponytail.

 

That was exactly how I felt, but I thought it was because I was young, inexperienced and stupid.

 

“How come it’s like this?”

 

“Because it’s you...and it’s me.” There it was again. You and me. Like he’d said a week before, it would change things for you and me.

 

I think he could feel my heart racing.

 

“What’s it going to take to make you sleep?” he asked, with one of his little chuckles.

 

“I don’t know.” It was true. I didn’t even know what was wrong with me. He was here. Why wasn’t it ok? Why wasn’t it enough?

 

He started humming something low and quiet. I didn’t recognize it but it sounded like a lullaby, the lilting sound of a mother trying to calm a child.

 

This was just, weird weird weird. A vampire, humming me to sleep. A vampire trying to sooth a savage Slayer. But it was nice.

 

“Shhh…you’re thinking so loud it’s keeping ME awake,” he said, then he began humming again.

 

He was right, my brain was whirring and I wouldn’t let it stop, and just BE. Just be here with him.

 

“Shhh…” He nipped my shoulder hard enough to make me jerk. Hard enough to yank my brain into the present.

 

This is ok, this is ok, this is ok. No one is going to come and tell you, you can’t have this, I tried to reassure myself.

 

When I woke up, he was dressing. I wondered if he had planned to take off into the night while I was sleeping, but he came to me immediately. “I really do have to go.”

 

Yes, I knew. I nodded. He finished dressing, and came back and leaned over me on the bed. I thought he was going to kiss me, but he didn’t. “Buffy…” his voice was a tiny bit shaky. “Don’t wait for me.”

 

He didn’t know when he’d be back. He would someday, but it could be 50 years from now or 5 years from now. Maybe he’d breeze by to see if I’d survived Slayerhood after all.

 

Don’t wait for me meant, don’t expect a postcard. Don’t believe every story you hear about me. Go out and fuck some other boys. Kill lots of bad guys. Go to college, but most of all, remember me fondly.

 

That was the most important part. He didn’t want me to forget him or put him behind me, he just didn’t want me to wait.

 

This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. He shouldn’t be here telling me this. It was implied, right? Wasn’t it implied, when we decided to make good on the lusties we’d got cranking a year ago? It was implied that we’d satisfy our curiosity, thumb our noses at my Watchers and go on our merry debauched ways.

 

Maybe we could have then, why couldn’t we now?

 

He shouldn’t have to tell me not to wait, it shouldn’t have even been an option. The idea of waiting should have been so ridiculous that it didn’t need to be mentioned. But here he was, mentioning it.

 

I reached up to him…a goodbye kiss…

 

“Mmm-mm.” He shook his head. I could see his point. Why go there? Why have something like that be our last memory of each other, the thing that would eat at our brains?

 

He left. I watched him go out the window, but I didn’t close it behind him. Amazingly, I fell back asleep. I did it again the next night, and the next night and for a few hundred nights after that.

 

There are many things that Spike does well, and sadly, one of them is leaving. He’s had a lot of practice.

 

*******************************************

 

Q&A

 

-Are the sewers system as complex as in the show? I know it's a weird question but I was wondering how did the vampires manage to move from one place to another during the day and the sewers are a little too convenient

First thing, there are two kinds of sewer systems. The ones that take away actual sewage from the drains and toilets and take it to a treatment plant.

 

They are also full of gross, stinking sewage, and there is no easy way to get in or out of them, they are sort of a closed system because carry human waste. 

 

A few demons use them but no human or vampire I’ve ever known has used the Collinsville sewers for transit.

 

However, there are also what is known as a storm drain, that is where the water that falls on streets during rain runs off to. You see the openings in the curbs of streets, etc. Those are much larger and easy to get in and out of. They are also much cleaner.

 

In a city the size of Collinsville even the storm drains aren’t large enough to stand in except where lines interconnect, for instance under manholes, because that is where workers get in.

 

Most of the pipes you’d have to crawl through, some you can get through by stooping. They are not as extensive as the actual sewage system and more importantly, they aren’t all connected to each other. They usually run to the nearest reservoir, retention pond or body of water, in other words, they won't always take you where you want to go.

 

You can definitely use them to get around, but it’s not like a stroll in the park. Vamps, demons and middle school kids make use of them. There is usually quite a bit of graffiti, broken bottles and trash in them.

 

Most vampires stay inside during the day. However, demons not so much. Depending on the variety they can be found in all sorts of places day or night.

 

You know how you see Spike running around in daylight with a blanket over him in the show, a vampire can do that, but it does tend to draw attention.

 

He’s had to do it to get out of tight spots. The eyes are the real problem. It takes much less UV to damage them than the skin of a vampire.

 

-Are you stronger than the vampires?in the sho, it looks like you are about the same but to have a person with equal strength fight a lot of vampires doesn't make sense to me :P

 

A Slayer is very strong, has excellent reflexes, and some metabolic differences that help put that to good use.

 

Training is key because without it, even with the physical advantages, fighting vampires and demons would be very hit or miss. A weapon is most effective when you know how to use it. That’s as true for the body as anything else.

 

I can definitely hold my own in a fight and defend myself when I am attacked. I know how to use a variety of weapons as well. Vampires vary in strength. Larger vamps and male vamps tend to be stronger. Most aren’t trained fighters, so I have the advantage. Overall I am stronger than the average vampire, but not as strong as the strongest.

 

 

The role of the Slayer is complex. The title is The Slayer, not vampire Slayer, meaning vampires weren’t the thing I primarily focused on.

 

As cool as it was on the TV show, I couldn’t easily take out a gang of five vampires on my own. Ugh, I hate to admit that. On the other hand, many of the things I dealt with were way scarier and nastier than a strong guy with pointy teeth.

 

 

-How do you manage the fact that you keep getting old while Spike stays the same?That part of dating vampires is a little bit overlooked in the show so I was wondering what you thought

Gah. I HATE this issue. Spike and I have talked about it, and it does come up in the story.

 

 

I was wondering how old you were when you became a public figure. I mean, I guess I could just Wikipedia it, but I also wonder what it was like. I was thinking it's hard enough to a) come of age as a girl in the world and b) come of age as a girl as the Slayer -- never mind coping with people believing in a famous, partially fictionalized version of you during all of that.

The first book didn’t come out until several years after I aged out of being the Slayer. I wasn’t in the public eye when I was a teenaged girl.

 

I will address how that happened in the epilog because I don’t want to give the story away.

 

As far as coming of age, it’s hard and it’s not something that I did just once. I think we have to come of age over and over again because we keep aging and entering new stages in life.

 

I know I’ve been surprised over and over in my life when I’ve been faced with a new challenge, met it and then was like “Wow, now I know who I am in a situation like that!”

 

However, since we are at a point in the book where people traditionally think of as the “coming of age” time, I’ll address that more specifically.

 

I mentioned earlier that I was not so great a friend because I was distracted by my mission. You can apply that same level of distraction to every other area of my life.

 

Being the Slayer made me grow up quickly in a few ways while holding me back in others. That will become more and more apparent as you read the story.

 

I can tell you this. I felt younger than the other students at school, sometimes younger than my sister who is a bit more than three years younger than me. They all seemed to know how to handle themselves. I knew how to handle weapons and fight bad guys, both skills I hoped not to need once I hit my 22nd birthday.

 

Spike had a point, Slayers aren’t trained to live, they’re trained to fight and to some extent, to die honorably in the line of duty as heroes. To die fighting evil is a noble thing. Failing at real life...not so much.


	7. The One Where I Almost Died

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy has a hairy run in with a creepy Big Bad

The One Where I Almost Died

 

Actually, I almost died several times, but in the heat of a fight, it doesn’t always register that way. There were times when the opponent would have me down or cornered and I’d think “Uh oh, might be in trouble here.” That didn’t last more than a few seconds, either I was going to get out of it or I wasn’t. There wasn’t a sense of impending doom as much as an “Oh shit!”

 

Then there were the times the crew and I were dealing with something old, evil and organized. Something with an agenda, that had me on its “to do” list.

 

Even among us devotees and defenders of the supernatural order, there is confusion about what is mythology and what is reality. There are a lot of ideas flying around out there about the special powers and properties of Slayer’s blood.

 

Drinking it, supposedly, would make one able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, breathe under water, or become immortal. Seriously, if it could do all that, Slayers would never die. Even so, there were many threats against my life by this or that wacko that wanted to harvest my blood to sell, drink or use in some mysterious ritual. They were always evil rituals. No one ever wanted my blood to end world hunger or create world peace. sigh...

 

Humans operate on a 365 day year, but various demon sorts operate on cycles that aren’t based on our Sun and can vary from a few milliseconds to millennia or more.There are some dimensions that operate in negative time as well, but that’s too weird to get into here

 

Just as they are in the human world, supernatural rituals were usually scheduled for a particular “day” that had significance on their calendar. Giles, Wes, and the Watcher’s Council spent a lot of hours following the stats on who wanted to do what and when they wanted to do it.

 

At first, I tried to follow along, but it was too much, too confusing, too relentless, and too scary. I let the Watchers make the call on which ones I needed to know about and whether I needed to address them. That was exactly the kind of thing Wendy loved, risk identification and assessment! Anything involving algorithms gave her a major case of the happies.

 

Thank goodness that Giles and Wes didn’t decide having a best friend was a liability. I would have totally lost it, or given up, which is the same thing with less bling. Having Wendy by my side did more for my morale and emotional well-being than having two Watchers by my side. I wasn’t Wendy’s job, I was her friend.

 

I had resisted the urge to tell my mom about what happened with Spike. I knew pretending it was hypothetical wasn’t going to fool her, nor would the old, “I have this friend...” schtick. I had considered telling her what happened, but not telling her who.

 

I doubted I’d get away with it. She would have badgered me. She might have grounded me until my Slayerage was over. She might have hugged me?..listened to me?..told me that she understood and it was just part of life?

 

I was afraid she would tell me I had been stupid, first to let it happen and then to feel the way I felt about it. I didn’t want her to see me as stupid girl, while my sister, who was younger, had her act together. I didn’t want my mom to be disappointed in me again. And what else could she be? I’d done something impossible.

 

I decided to talk to Wendy. It wasn’t going to be an easy conversation to initiate, even with my BFF (best friend forever). I rehearsed how I was going to begin. Hey, guess what? Remember that Spike guy?

 

She’d been great about everything with Scott, totally on my side, and full of righteous indignation at Angel. But Scott had been what first sex is supposed to be, dumb ass fumbling, premature ejaculation and not knowing what to do with the condom afterward.

 

Angel had stolen my moment, my awkward right of passage. What had Spike done? Stolen? Given? Gifted? What words were there for what we had done together? I knew some words but I didn’t know how to string them together into a sentence that I was willing to say out loud, even to my best friend.

 

Hey, Wendy, you know that Spike guy? He came over one night and fucked me doggy style so hard I could barely walk the next day! And WHY, when I thought that, did my girl parts get tingly?

 

No. I had to have an intro, a way of couching what happened so it seemed less dirty and rapey.

 

“Can I come over?” I called Wendy one evening the week after. I felt like I was dying inside and I had to tell someone.

 

“Yeah, sure, of course. Is something wrong Buffy?”

 

She asked because we usually hung out at my house, not hers. If I was switching it up it probably meant I’d had a major blow up with my mom. Basically, it was a sign that SOMETHING was wrong.

 

“I’m not sure….”

 

“Buffy, are you? I mean, you and Scott…you haven’t… You’re not, you know?”

 

“I’m not pregnant.” Yeah, I understood where she was going with that. It’s a best friend thing.

 

“Oh, well, great! Yeah, come on over!”

 

Wendy gave me a hug upon arrival. This helped tons. It was best friend code for “Whatever happened, I’m here for you.”

 

I hugged her back, which is best friend code for “Thanks, I really needed to know that because something BIG happened.”

 

Then she hugged me back, hard, which meant “It’s ok, I can handle it.” Then we went to her room.

 

We sat across from each other on the bed. She didn’t say “Spill.” She knew it was big and I needed a minute to pull myself together.

 

“Something happened,” I said needlessly.

 

She put on her serious but nonjudgemental face, fully prepared to be supporto girl.

 

I reached for her hands. “I…OMG…”

 

“Something happened…” Wendy has a way of repeating what you said back at you to make sure she has it right.

 

“I had sex,” I said it and waited.

 

She looked a tiny bit confused. She knew all about Scott, but that was a few months earlier and Scott and I weren’t dating anymore. I wasn’t dating ANYONE. Word had gotten around about my psycho uncle and I just didn’t want to go there again.

 

“Buffy, with who?” She was truly and honestly puzzled.

 

“OMG, I don’t know how to say this.”

 

“Not with, you know, Giles or anything?” She tried to keep horror out of her tone but she wasn’t completely successful.

 

“NO.” oh god no.

 

I was picking at my nails and looking at the bedspread and doing everything but just saying it.

 

“Come on Buffy, you can tell me anything. Really.”

 

I totally knew this was true, and I was going to tell her. I just needed to work up to it.

 

“It’s kind of a long story.” I wondered if I should go back, like way back to last year. On the other hand, it wasn’t such a long story. Spike and I talked about doing it, then he came over and we did it. That was one sentence.

 

“He’s older than me.” Is what came out first.

 

“Um…ok.” a hint of concern in her tone. “How much older?”

 

The truth, 150 years, was too absurd an answer. “It was Spike.” There, I said it.

 

She looked confused a minute, then even more confused, then totally confused. “You mean Spike Spike?”

 

“Yes, as in Spike, public enemy #1.” That was an exaggeration, mostly.

 

“Why?” That was a very good question, to which I had an answer that was entirely NOT like me but was absolutely true.

 

“He’s hot, and I was horny and curious.”

 

Her look wasn’t so much shocked as puzzled, like maybe I was putting her on and she wanted to be sure before she said anything else.

 

“You had sex with Spike. The vampire,” she fact checked.

 

“Last Friday.” I nodded.

 

“Wait, I thought he was already--” Because, supposedly, he’d left town a few days earlier.

 

“No, he was still here.”

 

“Hmmm. Well, I guess…I guess that’s…how was it?”

 

That’s when I started crying. I cried and cried. Wendy grabbed a box of tissues and came to sit next to me. She gave me a side hug. She didn’t ask any questions for a few minutes, which was really great because I couldn’t have answered through all the snot anyway.

 

“OMG Buffy, are you OK? I mean, what happened, did he..?”

 

Now maybe it was time for the long story. Maybe she could help me sort it out.

 

I waved my hand in front of my face. “I don’t know why I’m crying. I mean, I’m fine.”

 

“But maybe you’re not fine, it’s OK if you’re not fine. Sometimes we do things and we think we’ll be fine, but then…”

 

“I think I’m fine.”

 

She waited for me to stop sniveling and blowing my nose, so I could tell my story. For a bit, it was like she was channeling Spike and his “waiting patiently until I get over it” thing.

 

Maybe it was why I liked both of them.

 

“I know it’s really weird. But I wanted to do it. I just didn’t know it was going to be so…” Was there even a word to encompass all that I was feeling? “Big.”

 

She turned white as a sheet. I would have too if I had thought what she thinking.

 

“I mean the experience was big, Wen, not Spike. I mean, he’s just…normal, I guess.” It wasn’t like I had a ton of experience, but I hadn’t felt any shock or terror when I saw him naked. Just tinglies.

 

“Ok, maybe you should just tell me because I’m wracking my brain here and I can’t think of a single way the two of you would have ended up having sex.” Time to toss out any euphemisms and get down to business.

 

“Well, we fooled around some about a year ago, but nothing happened. Well, Ok, some stuff, but nothing, you know. And Giles came in, we were in his office. And then my mom...”

 

“Buffy, you’re not making sense.”

 

I took a deep breath. “Spike and I talked about doing it a year ago. We didn’t get the chance. So he came back this time, and…we did it.” There, that wasn’t so hard.

 

“But now you’re .crying.” Wendy was taking it to the next level.

 

“I’m so stupid, THIS is so stupid.” I waved around the soiled tissue, meaning crying was the stupid thing. Maybe all of it was stupid. “I feel…different. I didn’t feel different after Scott but after Spike. WITH Spike…”

 

“He’s a lot older than you.”

 

I nodded. That was basically the understatement of the year.

 

“Did he hurt you?” Wendy was trying to get to the bottom of it. She wanted to be a friend, but she didn’t know what I needed.

 

“He was kind of forceful,” I admitted, “but no, he didn’t hurt me. I just FEEL different. Like, I want to be with him.” I said it, and I knew it WAS how I felt, but it couldn’t be right. It didn’t sound right. It sounded stupid.

 

“You want to do it again,” Wendy translated.

 

“I guess. Wendy, I want to know him. Does that make sense? Like, we did this thing, we were really close but I don’t really know him. But then he came over the next night and he was really sort of sweet to me.” Puzzling behavior indeed.

 

“You like him.” Wendy was all about breaking down the facts.

 

I nodded. “But this is different. I feel like…” tears started again. “It was nothing like I thought it would be. And after we did it he stayed all night. He snuggled up next to me in bed.”

 

“Spike?” 14 kinds of disbelief registered in her voice and facial expression.

 

“I know, right? He snuggled me all up against him and told me I was amazing and then...” I blew my nose, “he came over the next night and he kind of sang me a lullaby because I couldn’t sleep. And he talked to me, about things, like being the Slayer. He spent the night with me. We didn’t do it again, or anything. We just…hung out.”

 

“That sounds, really neat Buffy. Spike did that?”

 

“Wendy, it wasn’t like it was with Scott, it was like I was with a man. I guess that’s it, Spike is a man.” I still felt like it was stupid to tell her that the whole thing made me feel like a woman. It was so cliché.

 

“It was better than it was with Scott,” she interpreted.

 

“Well, yeah, TONS better. Spike knows what he’s doing.” I felt my own forehead wrinkle, I was pretty sure that was true, but on the other hand, it’s not like Spike and I actually did a lot. Just that one thing, really hard.

 

“Well, that’s good.” She was glad to have something positive to take away from this, because she’d been really worried about me, what with all the crying.

 

“I’m not crying because I’m sad. I don’t think. I just feel like, I’ll never be the same. It’s totally stupid.” I was just going to say it. “I feel like I’m not a girl anymore. I feel like a woman. Why can he make me feel like that? He’s just some old vampire.”

 

I could see she was trying to understand, searching the database of experiences in her head for something comparable. Before she found it, I did.

 

“You know when Ellie’s mom got sick and she had to quit school to take care of her sister?” I referred to a TV show we watched. “And her mom was disabled and Ellie has to take care of everything, and she says she feels like she had to grow up overnight?”

 

Wendy was nodding, but cautiously, because what happened to Ellie was pretty traumatic.

 

“I feel like that. Like some part of me grew up, BOOM, in an instant and I won’t be the same, ever again.”

 

“Sort of like being the Slayer,” she pointed out.

 

“No, it’s different.” And it was. “I’m not crying because I’m sad. It’s like graduation. You’re glad you graduated but you feel sad too because you’re moving on and you’re not sure what you’re moving on to.” It was making sense to me now, as I explained it to her. I was feeling less stupid about it.

 

“Do you feel a bunch older now?” Wendy looked a little worried that I was leaving her behind.

 

“Only this one way. I think. I never felt this way before. No one ever…” I grabbed her hands. “No one ever touched me like that. Wen, he was INSIDE me.” I broke out in hot gooseflesh.

 

“Spike,” she said, still trying to sort it all out. I admit the concept was pretty bizarre.

 

“And it was like we had this moment…”

 

“An orgasm." Again with checking her facts.

 

“No. I mean, I didn’t. He did, but they always do.”

 

“So he had a moment.”

 

“No, WE did. At least I think he did too. And not just the orgasm. Wendy, I felt like I belonged with him.”

 

She stared at me a long cool moment, letting everything I’d told her sink in.

 

“I don’t want to be away from him.” I just said it. “I thought it was just going to be sex, you know, a good time or whatever and then he’d leave. But he didn’t leave and I didn’t want him to leave.”

 

“Do you love Spike?” she asked gently. I give her kudos for not sounding all horrified and grossed out by the idea.

 

“I can’t right? He’s a vampire, and I don’t really know him. Just because we did it, doesn’t mean I know him.”

 

“Then why are you crying?” This was one of those gentle “think about it” questions. She wasn’t grilling me or anything.

 

“Because everything changed, but nothing changed. I don’t know what to do with this. I want the world to stop until it all makes sense, but the world doesn’t do that. And Spike left because of course he left. He doesn’t live here but this thing happened and I feel like this, and it doesn’t fit in with anything.”

 

“Having sex with someone can be a pretty big deal, and it sounds like it was sort of intense.” Wendy was still holding my hand.

 

“VERY intense.”

 

“Was it, you know, good?”

 

I could feel my face go all deer in the headlights. “Yeah. Crazy good. It blew me away. But I don’t know if it was good because it was him, or because of what we did.”

 

“Do I want to know what you did?” She looked sort of terrified.

 

“It wasn’t anything bad.”

 

“Ok, so, you and Spike... kissing.” She was easing herself into it.

 

“Well, some.”

 

“Ok, then you and Spike, with no clothes on?” she squeaked.

 

“Yeah...” This was getting a little weird even for me. She was looking more and more creeped out. “Wendy?”

 

“I don’t know Buffy. I mean, Spike is attractive but he’s also really scary and kind of rude.” She was not wrong. That was a fair assessment of Spike.

 

“So, some kissing, then you’re naked, then you two did it.” She looked proud that she had gotten the words out.

 

“Doggie style.” I blurted out.

 

There are no words for the look on her face. I swear I saw things spinning behind her eyes, like a slot machine. Images were whizzing past. I waited for them to stop spinning and land on something so I would know what to say next.

 

“Too much information?” I guessed.

 

“Yeah, kind of. I mean, no. I’m glad you told me, I asked right? But really Buffy? Doggy style with Spike?”

 

“Yeah, pretty much.”

 

“No wonder you’re freaked out. Wow, if Giles and Wes find out….”

 

“They will NEVER know,” I said pointedly, and then felt immediately guilty because of course Wendy would never tell anyone.

 

“Did you two have safe sex?” Curiosity won over.

 

I shook my head. “That’s bad, isn’t it? I mean, Spike’s probably been with hundreds of women. Ewww. Should I see a doctor?”

 

“I don’t think vampires, I mean they don’t get sick.”

 

“And he can’t get me pregnant.”

 

“Wow, so you and he were really... touching.” She looked concerned, horrified and more than a little grossed out.

 

“Yeah, we really, really were. It wasn’t like…I mean it wasn’t disgusting or anything.” And it wasn’t, but yeah, it also sort of was. I mean, after all, this was Spike we were talking about.

 

“What’s it like Buffy? I mean, to have someone inside you and..then doing all that, and then he…?”

 

“That’s what I mean Wendy, it was really intense. And yeah, just thinking about it, it’s kind of gross or whatever but it wasn’t like that. I just wanted him, SO much.

“And he’s not like he is when you’ve seen him.” That wasn’t exactly true, he was sorta just like that, but he was something more too. “I felt safe with him, which makes no sense at all.”

 

She had let my hands go by then. “I’m jealous.” She shocked me with that one. I knew she wasn’t jealous that it was Spike, she was jealous of the rest of it. It always sucks when your friend does something important before you do, especially if you don’t know when you’ll get to do it.

 

“Did you do it doggie style with Scott?” she checked.

 

“No way. It was Spike’s idea and I was a little bit worried but he said it would be ok.” I realized that discussing sex positions with Spike was possibly weirder than actually having sex with him.

 

“Did you do it other ways too? Like, lots of times?”

 

“No, it was just that one time. No repeat performance.” I gave a firm nod. “It was pretty rough and it kind of hurt.” She was looking at me very strangely now, like why had I done this very personal, painful thing with Spike.

 

“Wendy. I know I’m the Slayer, and he’s a vampire but it wasn’t like that. It was just him and me.” My voice got small again.

 

“Just like two people,” she finished for me. I could see she understood. She got it, and she GOT why it wasn’t all weird and gross. It wasn’t like I had freaky sex with some scary, old vampire (even though he was). We were just two people, doing a people thing.

 

I’d had a major (to me anyway) life changing experience so it stands to reason that right after that I’d have a life threatening experience. That’s how it goes when you’re the Slayer. Why they choose teen girls makes no sense to me because we’re kind of all over the place. Maybe it’s that hormonal thing, the power of the unstable!

 

 

****************************************************

 

A lot of people have asked why Holy Water and Crucifixes have power against demons and vampires. The Catholic Church is what is called, by folks like us, a mystery religion. The Church understands the supernatural and the demon world. It can operate in those realms. It has ancient rites, rituals, and incantations. Their priests really can perform exorcisms and bless things. Catholicism isn’t the only religion that can do that, but it’s the one that figures into this particular story.

 

People mostly don’t believe in the spirit world anymore and the Catholic church has lost a lot of creds, but for us, when shit hit the fan, we didn’t hesitate to go searching through rites, and rituals for answers. We were happy to throw around some Holy Water and pull out some sacred symbols. Anything that we could use to fight evil was fair game.

 

About two weeks after Spike and my big, sexy date, word came in that a local group of creepos was planning some horrible ritual.

 

This particular group of wackos was collecting body parts of a dead saint, who actually wasn’t a saint so much as a hero for evil. He was a priest who had gone rogue a few hundred years ago. He had masterminded a lot of evil rites and rituals and gotten away with it. Basically, he’d led a double life. The bad guys idolized him, while everyone else thought he was a man of god.

 

He had even been canonized. It was believed that he had lived such an exemplary life, that the Church declared his soul was in heaven. Then his body was cut up into pieces and distributed all over the world. The Church does that with actual saints because it allows people all over to have access to someone who is in the presence of god.

 

Bits and pieces of this anti-Saint had been distributed all over the world so his followers could have access to someone who was in contact with big time evil. To get the most bang for their buck, his devotees decided to collect all the pieces, put them together like a big puzzle, recite incantations and have a ritual to bring him back to life. The real Catholic Church doesn’t attempt to resurrect their saints, they leave that up to god.

 

To accomplish the resurrection of St. Not-so-much, his followers needed the blood of a Chosen One to pour over all the pieces. There is always a sacrifice, and it always involves blood.

 

Blood is life, take the blood out of something, and it’s dead for good. You can revive someone whose heart has stopped beating or someone who has stopped breathing, but you can’t bring someone back once their blood is gone.

 

Guess who’s blood they wanted to resurrect their creepy anti-Saint’s body? Bingo! Slayer blood! I hoped the fact that I was no longer a virgin might render me exempt because there are all kinds of weird mythology about the power of virgin’s blood.

 

Apparently being a Slayer trumps being a virgin. I mean, seriously, you’d think that the fact I’d done a vampire definitely would have exempted me. Not that I was announcing my thing with Spike, but mysterious ritual types can usually tell that kind of thing. They read auras or something. Anyway, they wanted my blood.

 

This should be easy right? Like most of these ceremonies, it has to take place on a certain day. We should be able to just send me out of town for a vacation and foil their evil plot. Why isn’t it EVER that easy? Because believe me, it never is.

 

One issue is that they have “agents” all over the place. Just like the Holy Church has churches and priests all over, so do the bad guys. Using sorcery, they could track me down.

 

Still, why not lock me in prison or someplace where it would be really hard for them to find me? I’ll tell you why, because my job wasn’t to protect my life at all costs, my job was to fight evil. My job was to end this thing, for good, so they could never perform the ritual. Ever. That was my calling, even if it meant (and it often did) using myself as bait.

 

Wendy and Wesley (isn’t that adorable) were hard on the trail of the details of this disgusting ceremony. The where, not surprisingly, was Collinsville, possessing its very own Fissure to Hell and the Slayer to boot!

 

We found out that the ritual had to take place on the anniversary of the day this patron of evil had taken a vow of eternal dedication to the path of darkness. Some people don't know this but back in 1752 the calendar we use was adjusted by 11 days, this is why I need Wes and Wendy on board because they can figure out actual anniversaries based on the combination of the pre and post adjusted calendars. The supernatural evil apparently didn't accept the change.

 

My crew came up with a plan. (seriously, you’re not going to believe this) The plan was to remove all my blood, then have me interrupt the ritual and destroy the “relics”, (that’s what they call the body parts).

 

It will be easy to get me in there because the bad guys are going to kidnap me. They won’t hurt a hair on my head until the ritual itself because they need me healthy and unblemished.

 

We just need to keep them from getting my blood.

 

Wendy had found, via her research, that there actually IS a way for something to stay alive without its blood. Artificial blood. It had been tested on a dog who lived to see another day. Some scientists pumped out its legit blood, filled it with this fake stuff and then stood around waiting to see how long it was before dog dropped dead. (An oversimplification, so sue me)

 

Fake blood can carry oxygen and some chemicals to cells, but it can’t do the gazillion other things that blood does. Wendy and the Watchers are thinking that it only has to work long enough for me to foil the bad guys and with Slayer strength and healing I can survive longer on artificial blood than the dog. They wouldn’t divulge just how long the dog actually lived.

 

Another problem with this fake blood is that it doesn’t clot. If I get wounded fighting the baddies, it is just going to pour out of me and I’ll die. You can imagine my hesitation.

 

You’d think just getting the artificial blood would be so difficult and expensive that it wouldn’t be feasible, but the Council has ways and means that would blow your mind. They aren’t rocking it at the level the Church is but they can make things happen that would Blow. Your. Mind.

 

The upside, Wendy tells me, is that they can keep my real blood alive so that once I’ve completed the mission, they’ll just pump it back into me all red, warm and bloody. I said ixnay on the akfay odblay. (Pig Latin for “Hell no”)

 

As the Slayer, I have the right of refusal. No one can make me do anything. They can strongly suggest, encourage, guilt and even threaten me, but they can’t MAKE me. So I put an end to the subject of the blood letting. I didn’t care which side we were talking about, no one was getting my blood.

 

“Ok, so what’s plan B?” I asked all chirpy and sounding way more hopeful and positive than I felt. Plan B was old reliable, go in there and do it all manually.

 

Are you wondering why I didn’t just go in and throw a hand grenade and bring it all to a screeching halt? Supernatural doesn’t work that way. That’s why it’s called SUPERnatural. It has it’s own operating systems that aren’t mixy with your garden variety weapons. (besides, the bad guys probably would have noticed I was carrying a hand grenade)

 

Fire is a good crossover weapon. Most of the supernatural realms recognize the basic elements, fire, water, air, and earth. If you bury something under the ground it blocks it’s energy because earth is an element. This is why the Fissure to Hell saw so much action, it’s a tear in the earth, a portal for energies to pass through.

 

The relics of this Unholy dead guy could be destroyed with sacred flame. (like that insane hooky glove thing on the TV show)

 

Plan C is to get our hands on the parts of this non-saint so they can’t get them all together. That would reduce the power they could harness and would likely render the entire thing pointless. A missing fingernail or bit of dust here or there wouldn’t matter, but they had to have the major parts so they could resurrect their leader.

 

My blood would be used to reanimate him.They’d been collecting the pieces for a long time. Several times their evil treasure hunt had been thwarted, but now, finally everything was in order. So much for plan C.

 

OK, here comes the gut wrencher. Giles tells us that this last time Spike was in town, supposedly on perfectly innocuous Council/Tribunal business, he was actually delivering the last part of the unholy dead guy. That’s right. SPIKE came to Collinsville to set me up to be killed, to raise an agent of evil.

 

When Giles said this, the color drained out of my and Wendy’s faces to a degree, that if the bad guys had seen me, they would have thought my blood had already been taken.

 

Xander was not surprised, he didn’t trust Spike. He didn’t trust any vampire ever. That’s a good trait to have in a friend if you’re the Slayer unless of course, you happen to be sleeping with a vampire. Xander went off on one of his “I should have known” tirades. Giles and Wes were looking all sheepish because they should have known as well, and not fallen for the bull shit story that Spike fed them about his reason for showing up in Collinsville.

 

My first reaction (after my heart turned to lead) was “How could I have been so stupid?” Did I really think he came back because he wanted to get with me? Even if he DID want to get with me it was probably because having sex with a Slayer increased some evil power he had. Maybe it recharged his bad guy battery. No wonder he said I was amazing, he was rushing on some high he got from having sex with the Slayer.

 

Or maybe, during sex, he’d implanted something inside of me. Maybe that was why it hurt because he was implanting something that would make me vulnerable, and the reason I felt all clingy and different was because of whatever he’d done to me.

 

He’d said there would be blood. BLOOD! That’s it, he did it in that position because then he could blame the blood on it so I wouldn’t suspect what he was up to. He had probably collected a sample.

 

Now I had to tell Wes and Giles what happened because it might be the only thing that would save my life. We’d have to check, to see if there was some thingy in me. We’d have to do some kind of spell to see if he’d somehow changed me or weakened me. When you’re the Slayer, your life is not your own. Your privacy is not your own. Nothing matters except the mission.

 

I thought of what Spike said concerning Slayers at the end of their gig giving up, not caring to go on, once they were free. When every little aspect and detail of your life has been about the mission for 7 years, where do you go? What do you have left but wreckage and a void where your life should have been had you actually had the luxury of creating one?

 

Once you’re not the Slayer anymore, you’re pretty much nothing but a 22 yr old nobody with a string of broken relationships, scar tissue, and useless knowledge of the supernatural. You miss out on the formative years of life and end up a troubled person with no skills and no clue about living in the real world.

 

Even as my head and heart were going under because the blood had pooled in my feet, I realized I had to focus on what else Spike had said, ANYTHING that might help me figure out what was going on? Something that might have slipped in the heat of the moment.

 

He tried to get me to sleep maybe he did something to me while I slept, or planted something in my room…

 

He told me not to wait for him. Why would he tell me not to wait for him if he knew I was going to be dead in a few weeks? Not that such a stupid thing had to mean anything, or be important, but there was something about the way he said it, and the way he looked at me WHEN he said it.

 

No, that was just me being a stupid teenage girl. I had to focus. I had to accept that he was part of this nefarious plan and had set me up. None of the rest mattered it was back round noise, distraction.

 

And damn, he could not have thought of a better way to hide what he was doing, than by doing something to me that I was unlikely to divulge to anyone. He was good... smooth...cunning.

 

“Buffy, what it is?” Wes asked.

 

I knew I needed to say something, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Wendy was looking at me, stricken, but not as someone who was all about the mission and judging me for failing in my role. She was a friend, a girl who understood what I must be feeling in that moment. Crushed, humiliated, gutted.

 

“Um, nothing. Just Spike, you know. We thought he was here to help us.” I would tell them...soon. I needed a minute to figure out how to tell them, what to tell them, and when. It was going to be bad enough to tell Giles, even worse to tell Wesley, but no way was I going to do my walk of shame in front of Xander.

 

“Hey, Buffy,” Wendy said, and I thought for a sick minute that she was going to say something. We didn’t have much time before the ceremony, definitely no time to waste. My life was on the line so we couldn’t afford to be squeamish about this. “Can I talk to you?”

 

There was confusion on the faces of the Watchers and Xander, who hadn’t expected a tete a tete between girlfriends at such a critical time.

 

“Um, sure.” I followed her out of the library, down the hall and into the girl’s bathroom.

 

“OMG! What am I going to do? He set me up.” I was shaking. She was hugging me.

 

“I was so stupid. .And what if, what if he did something? I mean planted something or…He spent the night...twice. He could have put something in my room. Oh god Wendy, I don’t want to tell them I INVITED him into my house. That’s not just stupid it’s unforgivable.”

 

“Buffy, It’s going to be OK, we’re going to figure it out.”

 

“I have to tell them. How am I going to tell them? But I have to, right?”

 

Wendy let me go, “Probably.”

 

“They won’t forgive me, I mean they can’t forgive me. It’s not just that I put myself in danger and my mom. I put everything in danger. My whole mission. If I die, Wendy, if they complete the ritual, it’s all my fault.”

 

This was unthinkable. But this was it, the price of lust.

 

“No Buffy, don’t say that. You didn’t know.”

 

“I didn’t have to know. He’s evil. That’s all I needed to know. It’s what they’ve been telling me from the start. Don’t consort with evil and I went and consorted. I can’t claim I didn’t know. He’s a vampire.” I was still shaking.

 

Some of my upset was because even though everything I couldn’t accept it. Part of me couldn’t believe that I’d been so totally duped and that he’d been so unreservedly evil.

 

“Wendy, can you tell them. I mean, I know they NEED to know, but I can’t. I can’t say it.”

 

“Well, we could tell them he took advantage of you. They’d believe that, and we could say that you were ashamed to say anything, or scared. He threatened you.”

 

We could do that, and hope they didn’t bring up the fact that with my Slayer strength it was very unlikely that a vampire, working alone, could take advantage of me in that way without my cooperation.

 

“Sure they’ll be mad that you didn’t tell them right away, but lots of girls don’t say anything when something like that happens…”

 

“The first time it was Angel, being all creeper guy, this time it’s Spike being all…” Being all what? Seducto guy? What about his hand on the small of my back? What about his waking me up to let me know he was leaving when he could have disappeared into the night like fog? And what about him telling me that I’d make it to 22 because I was good at what I did?

 

He was so good, so slick.

 

“What are you thinking?” Wendy asked, watching my wheels turn.

 

“Just how…how good he was. I mean, not the sex but the things he said, the way he acted. He didn’t act like he was trying to hurt me.”

 

I knew she believed me, and I knew if we told Giles and Wes that Spike had had sex with me, consensual or not the Council would be told and they would likely hunt him down and kill him. He had hurt me, set me up, and they’d take him out.

 

I told you before, the Slayer/Vampire thing wasn’t personal. We were supposed to fight to the death because that was the gig, we weren’t supposed to end up in bed together. We weren’t ever supposed to make it personal. Making it personal muddied the water, it was a distraction and a liability.

 

If I told my Watchers, I was putting Spike on death row. On the other hand, if Spike had set me up. He’d put himself on death row, they already knew he was involved. He would be outed and he wouldn’t be playing Council emissary for the Tribunal anymore. His cred was worthless now.

 

“You tell them, I can’t. Just say whatever, I guess.” I said hollowly.

 

“You don’t believe it.” She could read it in my face.

 

“I don’t know what to believe.” I realized tears were rolling down my cheeks. “Talk about humiliation huh?” I gave a derisive laugh. “Color me gullible.”

 

There weren’t a lot of other explanations or arguments to be made on my or Spike’s behalf. I’d invited him into my house and had sex with him. All it could ever be was a liability the only question was how MUCH of a liability?

 

This explained why he was in town days after Giles thought he’d left. It wasn’t for me it was so he could get me alone and do what he did, something he knew I would never tell anyone.

 

“Does it matter Wendy, how they got the pieces of this guy? I mean, we know they have them, now we have to stop them. It could have been Spike, or it could have been someone else.” But if Spike had done something to me, to make me weak.

 

“I’ll tell them.”

 

“They’ll kill him,” I said, emotionless.

 

“Yeah, but if he did this, he sort of deserves it right?”

 

I nodded.

 

It certainly was an effective plan. Demoralize the Slayer.

 

Wendy went back to the Library, told Giles and Wes she needed to see them alone. I didn’t know how she explained it. I know she didn’t tell them I went along with it, or that I wanted it. She had to let them know I invited him in.

 

What I do know was when I returned to the library they were very quiet and serious all the while peering at me as if I was some potentially dangerous lab specimen.

 

They did a seeing spell on me to check if Spike had implanted something, or even done something chemical or magical to me. They found nothing. They scanned my room to see if he had placed something there that would have put me in danger, again, nothing.

 

Giles asked if my mother knew about what had happened between Spike and I. He offered to speak to her on my behalf. I told him that if she found out she would whisk me out of Collinsville so fast and take me so far away that his head would spin and it was in his best interest to not say a word. He dithered a bit but said he saw my point. I didn’t dare ask the question that was burning in me: What would happen to Spike and when it happened, would they tell me?

 

We were back to plan B, to go at it, fists flying. The team was ready on back up. Obviously cutting the parts into smaller pieces wasn’t going to stop the ritual. Magic, incantations and supernatural fire had to be used. This was our one shot. Since I couldn’t take weapons in with me, I had to try to interrupt or postpone the ritual long enough for the crew to intersect.

 

This was the first time I’d been kidnapped by this particular variety of evil. I was used to demons that were all kinds of ugly with hair, horns, spines, yucky smells and secretions, so this was unexpected. They were human, and from the look and sound of things, well educated. They snatched me right out of my bed, shot me with a tranquilizer and carried me off.

 

They were extremely clean and must have found me distasteful because they cleaned me very carefully, bathed, anointed and blessed me. Then they made sure I drank clean water and ate only fruit and nuts. They took very good care of me for the remaining 36 hours until show time. It was better than being thrown in some nasty pit with nowhere to take care of normal, but unpleasant smelling bodily functions, but it was wiggy too because if they were this good, chances of me getting out alive seemed slim.

 

They put me in a small plain room, with no window. The door was guarded, bolted, locked and barred. I could have done with some reading material, but maybe it was just as well that I didn’t have any, I was able to concentrate on the plan. I kept my ear to the door hoping to hear something useful. I had plenty of time to wonder why and how Spike, of all vampires, got involved with this kind of operation. It didn’t feel like something he would do.

 

These characters, for all their cleanliness (which apparently is NOT next to godliness), made deals with the devil. A vampire was a lightweight compared to some of the dregs they’d worked in tandem with to collect the parts and pieces of their beloved dead guy. I wasn’t surprised THEY would work with Spike, I was surprised HE would work with them.

 

Clearly, I knew nothing about the real Spike. He had me completely fooled. That was how bad guys operated, they had one face for work and another for play.

 

I had a lot of hours on my hands to think about everything that had gone down with Spike, about Wendy telling Giles and Wes some version of the story, and about how now, none of it mattered.

 

I had been feeling like I knew some great secret of the Universe, Look at me and my new womanly self. I had learned something alright. I learned what so many women had learned. A guy will say and do anything to get a poke at you.

 

If I got out of this alive, everything that had happened with Spike would be put in its rightful place, something that happened one Saturday night that was stupid, but not very important. Just a fuck. Just a fuck.

 

I decided to sleep. If I was going to get out of here, it was because someone from the outside sprung me, and my gang wasn’t GOING to spring me yet because we had to get to the part where the ritual was actually taking place. There was no reason not to sleep.

 

I thought about my mom and wondered if Giles and Wes had come up with some lie to keep her from worrying, or if she was all kinds of freaked that I was missing in action. There was nothing I could do about it, not a damn thing. The monk guys hadn’t needed an invite to come in. At least that couldn’t be blamed on me. I invited Spike in, but the monks did their own dirty work.

 

I didn’t know whether it was day or night when the door opened, and I was given a clean white shift to put on.

 

They led me from the room. I wondered why they weren’t surprised that I went along without a fight, shouldn’t I have been struggling or something? But I went along, and I tried not to look scared.

 

Ironically, I couldn’t get Spike’s words out of my mind…hold on to that thought, it will keep you alive. Walking down that stone tunnel with the monks, real life no longer seemed like even a remote possibility. The thought that I had 5 more years of putting myself in mortal danger, was overwhelming. 5 years, when you’re 17, is forever.

 

Seeing how the crew hadn’t found anything planted on me, maybe telling them about Spike had been entirely unnecessary. Still, it was useful information to have, knowing the way Spike operated, as well as what a sucker their Slayer was.

 

Wanting a normal life would keep me alive. Well shit, you know what else would give me a better shot at reaching adulthood? Slaying vampires instead of pretty much doing anything else with them.

 

We walked for what felt like miles. Here I was, not a tool in sight. No magic fire, no Holy Water. Why had I agreed to this plan that basically felt like no plan at all?

 

My captors bound my hands behind my back. I’m the Slayer, not Houdini. I’m strong, but binding can be damn effective when done correctly.

 

The monk-en-steins were getting into their groove. They were dressed in robes, several were chanting. Incense and candles were burning. On a stone table lay a number of boxes of various sizes, some made of wood, some of silver and bejeweled. Giles had given me the heads up, these were reliquaries, special coffins that held the remains of St McEvilsen. Each was closed with a red wax seal that had a symbol stamped in it. Someone on the other end had authenticated the relic, put it in the box and sealed it. It was not to be opened until the ritual. No tampering. The seals were protected with charms and curses and other kinds of mojo.

 

I didn’t know what to do at this point. So much stupid had gone down, and now I was going to die so I decided to let myself cry. They say that men are suckers for a woman’s tears right? So what could it hurt? Maybe it would annoy them and delay the ritual. Since they wanted me clean, having my face all covered with snot was a bad thing. They’d have to stop and clean me up.

 

Or I could pee on myself! These guys had an issue with bodily secretions, that was one thing I noticed. They were all clean and shaven. I didn’t see a single hair on them. I was surprised that they hadn’t shaved me.

 

I started boo hoo hooing. They looked annoyed and chanted louder. I began crying out loud about my poor mother, and my little sister, and then I began calling out to God. I figured that would, at the very least, piss them off.

 

One of them back hand swatted me so hard I saw stars, then they gagged me. They weren’t about to have their ritual interrupted. Just in case I tried anything else, they bound my ankles too. Right about then I lost all hope of getting out of there. My tears kept rolling down my face because it really was sad, and stupid, (and it was hard to breathe because of all the snot) What a shame that the Slayer was going down sobbing and not noble or even dying mid fight. I was going to be sliced open by these guys and that was it. I was reduced to nothing more than a tool for evil.

 

For good measure, they backhanded me again, and I saw stars again, pretty, pretty orbs of colored light. There was ringing in my ears. They tied me to a cross (I kid you not) and hoisted it up above a stone table, then they began to open the boxes, chanting up a storm. Over each box they chanted prayers and wafted incense, then one of them would crack the seal. They’d open it and unwrap the relic from its silk or velvet cloth. After laying the part in place they’d go on to the next box.

 

This dead guy wasn’t in very good condition. One hand started falling apart as they lifted it out of its box and they had to place it wrapped on the table so they didn’t lose any of it. The head was particularly nasty. His torso was in several chunks, and get this, there was a silver sleeve around his penis. It had its own little jeweled sheath.

 

As I’m watching this, the occasional tear falling, I’m trying to think of what supernatural thing I could do. I’m thinking again, that peeing, especially now, would be all kinds of likely to piss them off. (good pun, hey?) They had me up here so my blood would fall on him..but what if something ELSE fell on him?

 

BAD time to suffer a shy bladder. BAD time to have followed my mom’s advice and used the facilities before I went anywhere. BAD time to have refused to drink any of the water they gave me in case it might be drugged. BAD time for all of it.

 

All I could hope for was that my crew was mojoing like crazy and about to bust through the door.

 

I watched the monks as piece by piece they reconstructed the anti-Saint. They opened one of the caskets, lifted out the contents, and amid much chanting unwrapped the velvet and there lay a prosthetic leg. Not one of the cool kind you see now, but an old school one. It looked like painted wood and had some kind of leather joint in the middle. From the looks on their faces, Saint Whatchamacallit didn’t have a prosthetic anything and this fake limb was throwing a major wrench in the works.

 

Chaos broke out. They tore into the remaining caskets to check and see if they contained what they were supposed to contain. It looked like they were all in order, but they couldn’t do the ritual without that leg.

 

Several of them began wrapping the parts and returning them to their reliquaries, and three more began working on getting the cross I was hung on taken down. While some were still babbling in Latin, others had forsaken it for English and various accented forms of broken English. They’d been tricked! They’d been cheated! They would get whoever was responsible for this blasphemy! Who had defiled their saint?

 

Just as they were hustling me, still bound and gagged (seriously, I was like bunny hopping to keep up with them), back to my cell, I heard the word Vampire.

 

VAMPIRE. They’d been cheated by a vampire. The missing limb, the prosthetic leg, the last piece of the puzzle, had been brought to them by a vampire. And I knew exactly which vampire they were talking about. Spike hadn’t set me up, Spike had saved me.

 

Maybe it had nothing to do with me at all. He might have taken the real leg and sold it on the black market, or maybe he was using it for some evil scheme of his own. Who knew? All I knew was that Spike hadn’t set me up. He had to have known that they needed ALL the parts. He had to have known that I wouldn’t be in danger unless they had all the parts.

 

I just hoped he made the real part very, very difficult to find.

 

A short time later my crew sprung me. With mojos chugging and some Holy Water tossed around left and right, Giles and company saved the day. Xander did the honor of lighting the three caskets that didn’t get saved by the fleeing monks, on fire. Everyone hugged me and fussed over me because I was really skinny and pretty bruised up.

 

“OMG, Buffy, you’re ok. You’re OK right?” Wendy checked me over for like the 20th time.

 

They hadn’t brought me any clothes so I was in the back of Giles car wearing my little white shift, with no undies and feeling very self-conscious.

 

The Watchers were rapid firing questions at me concerning who did what, when and how. In the middle of it, I blurted out “Spike didn’t do it.” He..he didn’t bring them the part they needed. He cheated them, there was an artificial leg in the coffin thing, they couldn’t do the ritual.”

 

Giles met my eye in the rearview mirror. “That’s what they said, that they’d been cheated by the vampire, the last part they needed.”

 

Wendy’s face went white. OMG. “What?” I shook her. “OMG, he’s not dead. You didn’t kill him. The Council? Giles, where is Spike?”

 

“He’s being dealt with,” Wesley said curtly.

 

“No, tell them no. He didn’t do it. You have to stop them. He saved me. If they’d had the part…don’t let them…”

 

“Buffy, you’ve been through a lot. You look like you haven’t eaten in days, and I know you are extremely relieved to be alive at all, let calmer heads prevail. Spike is responsible for many things. Please try to trust--”

 

“NO! He didn’t do it, you can’t let them hurt him. You can’t.” I was sobbing, and Wendy was trying to hold me back as I clawed out at the back of Wesley’s head.

 

“He didn’t do it.” I fell back sobbing into Wendy’s arms. Xander was on my other side and he put an arm around my shoulder. “Buff, he’s done plenty.”

 

OMG, had they told Xander?

 

“She’s hysterical Giles, we need to take her…”

 

“You’re not taking me anywhere. Take me home, I need to see my mom.”

 

“I think it’s best if you don’t go home just yet.”

 

“My mother? Does she know? What did you tell her?”

 

“She knows you were on a mission.”

 

“I just want to go home.” They were right. I was hysterical. The dam had broken and I was crying and thrashing and out of my mind. I ended up with a private room at the psych ward and some heavy meds.

 

“You’re lying to my mother aren’t you? You didn’t tell her I’m here.”

 

“You’re OK now Buffy, you just need rest. We didn’t want to worry her.” Wesley told me.

 

“You think she’s not worried? You told her I’m on some Slayer mission all this time and you think she’s not worried?”

 

Time to pull out the right of refusal. “You get my mother here and you call the council off of Spike or I am walking. I will tell my mother and she will take me so far from here--”

 

“I’m afraid that won’t work,” Giles said.

 

“Did you kidnap her too? Do you have her in custody?”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He said. “You’re clearly still hysterical, and it’s understandable considering what you’ve been through.”

 

“I want to see my mother.”

 

“We feel it’s best that you wait.”

 

“Did you tell the council? About Spike? That he didn’t do it?”

 

“The Council is rather more interested in what Spike DID do,” Giles said pointedly.

 

“It wasn’t like what you’re thinking.”

 

“It was exactly like what I am thinking Buffy. There is only one way it could be. No matter what he led you to believe. We have reason to believe it’s part of a larger plan to--”

 

I felt like my head being pushed under water. It was feeling I had when I was gagged and crying and not able to breathe. The feeling I had while watching some people focused on their own insane agenda, use me in any way they saw fit.

 

Giles was assuring me that is what Spike was doing. If he was, what made it any different from what Giles was doing? And the council, and Wes? If I was a puppet, and I had no way of knowing who I could actually trust, then what did any of it matter?

 

I began to scream. I screamed and would not stop screaming and when they brought someone to tranquilize me I stopped screaming just long enough to tell Giles that if they came a step closer I would kill them and I needed to see my mother. Now.

 

My mother was there a few hours later. Giles and Wes had briefed her and told me what they told her and what our agreed upon story was. I made no promises, but I admit, it was best not to let her know the whole of it.

 

The last thing I said to Giles before he left to escort my mother in was “Did you say anything to her about Spike.” Something flashed over his face, an expression of frustrated helplessness.

 

“No Buffy, I did not. Considering your mission and the element it puts you into contact with I thought it was better she not know that you’d been violated.”

 

Violated. Wow, that was a hell of a word, a hell of a mouthful of a word.

 

I sat in my mother’s arms for a very long while. She talked about work and what was going on with my sister and how we were making plans to go visit my Aunt and Grandmother at the holidays. She didn’t ask any questions, as Giles and Wes had told her that my memory was dodgy as the result of a hard knock to the head and dehydration, the partial truth.

 

Seeing me more or less “ok” relieved my mother a great deal. When she left she told me just to rest and she couldn’t wait to have me home. She said and did all the things you want your mother to do when your world has spun out of control, crashed and you came closer to dying than you were comfortable with.

 

Sure I’d been hanging over a table full of dead guy body parts, half dazed from being knocked around, and with a spear pointed at my heart. What did any of that matter if I was safe now, and my favorite dinner would be waiting for me when I came home?

 

In two days I was released, all rehydrated, blood tested and Watcher approved. As soon as I finished off a second helping of my mom’s good cooking I asked if Wendy could come over, and we went up to my room.

 

“Do you know if they’ve done anything to him?” I asked her right away. I didn’t have to explain who I was talking about. She knew.

 

“I haven’t heard anything specific, but I know there’s been a lot of conversation about it.”

 

“He didn’t set me up,” I said again.

 

“It sort of doesn’t matter to them anymore. He has access and you’re not mad at him Buffy. He knows he can get to you. He’s a liability.” Wendy wasn’t giving me HER opinion, she was telling me what the talk at the library was.

 

“We have to stop them.” My voice sounded hysterical to my own ears, it had been doing that a lot lately. “I don’t want them to hurt him.”

 

“I think it’s one of those things where once you put a hit out on someone...”

 

“This is my fault. It’s a mistake and it’s my fault.”

 

Wendy shook her head, “It’s not your fault.”

 

“I shouldn’t have told anyone. I shouldn’t have told you. I shouldn’t have.”

 

Wendy sat me down. “Do you hear yourself? Buffy, this has messed you up.” She sat down beside me. “You needed someone to talk to. This was a big deal, it IS a big deal and Spike, he can take care of himself. He has for a long, long time.”

 

“There has to be a way to call them off.”

 

Wendy didn’t say that maybe it was better this way but I think she thought it. Maybe it was better if Spike was gone, for good, but she was worried for me, and what might happen to me if Spike GOT gone, for good.

 

“I need you to do something for me,” I told her. “You can break into computer files, you do it all the time. I need you to break into the Council. There must be letters and reports. You can do that right? Find out what’s happened.?”

 

Her face changed, a smile crept over her face. “Yeah, of course I can do that. It should be easy. Giles leaves him computer open a lot of the time. He trusts me,” she said proudly then looked sort of sheepish because after this he wouldn’t have any reason to trust her.

 

Even though she took her commitment to the mission seriously, she was my friend first and foremost.

 

Three days later she told me what she’d found. She’d accessed records and memos, and it turns out that Giles didn’t tell the Council everything. What he had shared was, attempted seduction, accessing property and being part of an operation that specifically required the Slayer’s death.

 

Wendy went in and amended a few things, but most importantly she found out that Spike had not been eliminated. He was being sought and his involvement was being investigated.

 

She also told me about the records on me and my hysteria and emotional instability as the result of trauma. Thing is, none of that is unusual in Slayers. It wasn’t like I was a failure or even in danger of being relieved of my duties. It was just Slayer stuff. Heck, there have been a few Slayers that became rogue serial killers and as long as they kept fighting the big evil they were allowed to continue their job under surveillance. The Slayer gig is a big deal.

 

I asked Wendy to keep an eye on the files and let me know if any word came in on Spike. No word came in, but that was ok. No word probably meant he’d not been found and eliminated.

 

I had to get over this. I had to find a way to be ok if something DID happen to him. I had to find a way to not ask Wendy every day if she’d heard anything. I had to find a way to stop hating Giles and Wes, and hating what they knew, and to focus on my role as the Slayer.

 

I had to find a way…

 

So one night I went to my mom’s room, stuck my head in, knocked on the doorjamb and said, “Mom, can we talk?”

 

……………………………………………

 

A few months later Giles received GPS coordinates to investigate. In our garden shed, wrapped in one of my dad’s old painting t-shirts, and reeking of cat pee, was the missing leg.

 

Giles and Wes were given instructions on how to secure it until it could be collected by the Council.

 

“Buffy,” Giles asked me after the council had come to retrieve the leg. “Have you any idea how it came to be located in your shed?”

 

I looked at him, tiredly. Were we going to have to go through this again? It was obvious how it got there. Spike had put it there. THERE instead of in a reliquary and handed over to the anti-monks.

 

They discovered the deal Spike had made with the monks, the leg in exchange for nasty and dangerous things that shouldn’t fall into a vampire’s hands. No matter what, he wasn’t going to come out of this guiltless. He’d been trafficking in high stakes magic. That alone made him dangerous.

 

The fact that he was involved in that trade was more than enough to justify taking him out. There was nothing I could say to defend him. The best I could say is that he didn’t set me up. He didn’t pile that evil on top of the other evils that he actually WAS involved in. It wasn’t exactly a glowing recommendation.

 

He was going to be underground for awhile. He was wanted by the Council of Watchers and the secret society that he’d double-crossed as well as a few other unhappy customers who had a hand in the deal.

 

I wasn’t going to see Spike for a very long time. Or ever.

 

 

............................................

 

Q&A

 

Buffy, I saw how you describe Dawn in this chapter and so can tell that you're a bit jealous of her in some way, so my question, was Dawn anything, and I mean, anything like the one in the series? I mean, from what I've read, your Dawn's not bratty or one who steals your clothes or is nosy or anything. So can you give me a differentiation of the two, or perhaps a list of their similarities? My other question would be if whether your father and sister knew about the Slaying thing, or if they found out about it only after you lost your mojo? Thanks ahead for answering and again, you rock!

 

In personality, Dawn is quite a bit like her character on the show. There is not as large an age difference between us, only three years and some change. On the TV show, it was more like 5 years.

 

She is taller than me, and I think she is prettier. As you can imagine, mom, Spike, and my dad refuse to weigh in on that one. Dawn thinks she’s prettier too, so that gives you some idea of her personality. Lol.

 

She had more and nicer clothes that I would have loved to “borrow” but I was/am bustier than she is so that didn’t work out.

 

On the show, at first, they thought they would just leave Dawn out since she was out of the house so much of the time in real life. Then they decided they could make her useful so they pulled her into the story by making her the key.

 

You will definitely get to know her better in later chapters of the book!

 

Dawn does eventually find out I am the Slayer, my father didn’t find out till way after my tour of duty was over, and having missed the excitement, he still doesn’t really “get” it.

 

How does a new Slayer get chosen? 

They are called, not by the Council but by the times and circumstances. It is possible for four to be called in succession at the same place depending on what evil is active there. It’s also possible that the next one will pop up on the other side of the planet. It’s a case of what is happening at the exact time of the previous Slayer’s death or aging out.

 

This is determined by the Powers That Be and due to the beyond complex algorithm that determines all that, no one else knows the place. The S7 stuff about potentials was made up.

 

The Council, upon learning of the death of a Slayer, uses sorcerers to locate the next Slayer. It's hit or miss for a while. Sometimes the evil element finds her first and the Council locates her that way because they track the evil element. It's like seeing vultures circling over a corpse. Not a nice image but it's the best one I can think of. 

 

What about Wendy?

Because she figures largely in this chapter I thought I'd share a few fun facts with you about my dear and life long friend. 

 

She isn't of Jewish decent. She is half Welsh, and half Hispanic, and totally gorgeous. She's taller than me. She has her mother's smile, gentleness and compassion and her father's fascination with puzzles and figures. Sorry if that sounds sexist but that's the setup. If it helps, in my family it's my mom who's tough and my father who has soft hands and a soft voice.

 

She is definitely a math whiz and is fascinated by something called graph theory, which she probably would have specialized in if sorcery hadn't gotten to her first. Instead, she reads journals and threatens her family that she's going to go back to grad school to do just that. 

 

Wesley usually called Wendy, "Gwendolyn", which is her given name. You know how your mom will only use your full name when you’re in trouble? With Wes, it was the opposite. When all was right with the world, she was Gwendolyn, and when he was peeved with her, she was Wendy.

 

I like the name, Gwendolyn, even though I can see who going through life with it might be tough, but it’s pretty awesome. I call her Gwendy sometimes, and she is fine with it. Wendy is cool like I said, she’s fine with a lot of things. She KNOWS a lot of things and when you know how complicated things really are, it’s easier to let stuff slide, that doesn’t really matter.

 

All through High School she was my great co-conspirator, and when your job is related to being good, having someone who helps you get away with stuff is especially awesome. I don't talk a whole lot about Wendy in the book, but I don't want anyone to think that she wasn't every bit as important to me as Willow was to TV Buffy.


	8. The One Where I Don't Wait for Spike

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy goes through some very hard times and matures as the Slayer.

The One Where I Don’t Wait for Spike

 

My mom was great. I’m glad I finally talked to her about my encounter with Spike. I didn’t tell her the guy in question was a vampire. I told her it was sort of a one night stand with a guy I had a crush on.

 

“Older,” she said like it was a given. “Someone with experience?”

 

“Yeah, something like that.” The “how did you know” must have shown on my face because she went on to tell me that what happened to me, happens to a lot of young women.

 

“You’ve had to grow up fast, and it hasn’t left time for the other parts of life to develop at their own pace. You don’t get to have boyfriends, and of course, you’re just as curious as any of us.”

 

I let that sink in. Here was my mother, even though I’d been 100 kinds of stupid, not busting my chops over it. She was being supportive, which was just what I needed.

 

“It wasn’t all bad.” I was quick to tell her. “In fact it wasn’t bad at all. I just feel different. You know?”

 

“We can’t unsee what we’ve seen and we can’t undo what we’ve done,” she said with a nod. 

 

“It’s like one minute I feel stupid, and the next minute I’m glad it happened.”

 

“Have you talked to him?”

 

“Nah, he was kind of just passing through town.” Admitting that to her made me feel 101 kinds of stupid.

 

“Do you think we should get you tested? For STD’s” She was suddenly all business like and efficient. “Were you safe?”

 

“No, I think I’m good.”

 

“Buffy, do you think he does this a lot, with young girls? I mean if it’s a pattern... You said he was older. How much older.”

 

I know the color drained from my face. Did Spike do this a lot? I was nearly certain of it.

 

“He’s a few years older.” I hoped to avoid answering her other question.

 

“I mean if he’s a predator. Not that I want to invade your privacy, but you don’t want other girls to be taken advantage of.”

 

Predator was the most accurate term for what Spike was, but we couldn’t sic the vice squad on him. The one who was supposed to deal with predatory vampires was sitting right here, bending her mother’s ear.

 

“It wasn’t really like that. I wanted to do it. He didn’t make me or anything. He didn’t seduce me.” Did he?

 

“We all want our first time to be perfect,” she told me, “but they rarely are. You’re not the one in one hundred who get their romantic dream come true. You’re in good company, with the rest of us.”

 

“Was yours, you know, not so perfect?”

 

“Half drunk after a frat party with a guy who was not really my boyfriend. We dated for a little while, but it didn’t go anywhere.” She shrugged. “And I never thought I’d tell you that story, but I guess now it’s OK that I did.” She was pleasantly surprised.

 

“Mom, I keep thinking about him. Not just what we did, but HIM.” Since we were sharing secrets. “I wonder where he is, and if he thinks about me or was I just another one.”

 

I could tell from her expression that she didn’t think he thought about me, but she didn’t want to make this any harder on me than it already was.

 

“I mean, it’s totally OK if he doesn’t, because why would he? Right?” I said with a forced laugh.

 

“Because you’re special and beautiful,” she told me as if it made perfect sense that even some old guy who leches after naive girls would think I’m the bee's knees. (a term so ridiculous it’s awesome)

 

Deep down inside, I believed Spike did think of me, and not only because I was the Slayer, or because I was a good lay.

 

“Let’s go out to dinner,” she said. “Even if it wasn’t perfect, it’s a big deal.”

 

I wondered if I should tell her that he wasn’t the first. I decided not to. The thing with Scott seemed like a non-thing now. I’d had zero compulsion, after that happened, to talk to her about it. I certainly wasn’t going to tell her the part of that experience that was so memorable, Angel’s entrance, so there was no point in telling her about some groping on the couch.

 

We went out to eat and then we went shopping. I’m not going to claim that I can reduce what happened between me and Spike to a plateful of chicken Alfredo and two new blouses, but it really did help. Plus, I felt closer to my mom than I had for a long time. I had been avoiding her since the Spike thing, honestly, even long before that, and now we could really talk about things. Another piece was falling into place. It was one more reason to be glad it happened the way it did.

 

Mom had said it herself, these things happen. I wasn’t stupid or a freak. I was another young woman who fell for an older guy and got shown the ropes in a shocking way.

 

Shortly after my adventure with St Whatchamacallit and the missing leg, I had my 18th birthday, the birthday that supposedly signaled that I’d survive Slayerhood.

 

I can admit now, that I thought Spike might show up. It was silly. He hadn’t known how old I was, why would he have known it was my birthday? True, he could have looked it up, the Vampire Tribunal has the stats on the Slayer. It wasn’t impossible, just very unlikely.

 

I didn’t expect him to come to my party carrying a wrapped present with a bow on it, but I thought there might be some acknowledgment. I even checked the rain gutter near my window for telltale cigarette butts.

 

I didn’t have a big party, just my mom, sister and a few friends (and my Watchers of course) gathered at my house for cake and presents, then I and my crew of merry men went and hung out at the arcade. Yes, it’s lame, but cut me some slack, this was Collinsville after all. Point is, it came and went with no Spike.

 

It took me three weeks to work up to it, but after Spike’s no show, I told Wendy not to keep looking into the Council files for information on him. I knew it was time to make a clean break. Another piece had fallen into place. He had told me not to wait. I’d known what HE meant, and why he’d said it, but I hadn’t understood what it meant from my side. When my birthday came I realized that I had been waiting, even when I told myself that I wasn’t. I needed to move on.

 

I graduated that spring. I hope you’re not too disappointed but it was uneventful (though it did threaten to rain) No snake mayor, and the school didn’t go up in a big explosion. That was just a metaphor. There’s an old song by Alice Cooper (look him up) that says “school’s been blown to pieces!

 

That summer I was flown to England for six weeks of training at Council Headquarters. I met one of the Slayers who lived to see her 22nd birthday. It was amazing, and a little sobering. She was pretty banged up. She had some serious scars from a fire that nearly took her out, but she had made it out. She was married to a man who worked for the Council and had a little girl.

 

Sometimes I think that was the most important thing that happened during those weeks. It is true I learned things that probably saved my life and a lot of other lives besides, but meeting a surviving Slayer, who was living a semblance of normal life, had a profound effect on me.

 

The other living Slayer I didn’t meet. She hadn’t fared so well. There had been drug issues and depression, a few psych admissions and numerous charges for domestic violence against boyfriends and girlfriends. Apparently, she didn’t get along well with partners of either gender.

 

Her’s was a cautionary tale. There were several volumes of cautionary tales for Slayers, so her story didn’t especially surprise me. The surprise was that there was at least one that made the transition well. If she could, it was possible that I could too.

 

The Slayer has supernatural powers to fight supernatural beings, but she doesn’t have magic at her disposal. I can’t cast a spell, or throw a bolt of lightning or turn myself into an eagle and fly away. My immersion training in England was to teach me everything I COULD do on my own behalf, as well as how to take advantage of advanced technology.

 

The Council suggested placing a tracking device under my skin. Obviously, this could work in my favor. If I got kidnapped or in a bind, they could easily locate me. Trackers weren’t foolproof, but they were helpful. On the other hand, it was an invasion of privacy, and as Slayer I had the right of refusal.

 

The Council assured me the tracker could be removed at any time, so I decided to go for it. It had run through my mind that I didn’t want them to be able to track me just in case Spike came back. That is how I knew that I had to get the device. I couldn’t allow anything about him to influence my decisions as a Slayer or as a woman. He had said as much himself.

 

I got to go sightseeing while I was in England. The Council isn’t just a stuffy group of prudish old men. Being at Council Headquarters was a bit like being on the Starship Enterprise. There was a huge variety of people who worked there doing all kinds of jobs, there were a many “not quite humans” that worked there too.

 

Council members took me to pubs and bought me a half pint now and then. I didn’t care for them, two tries were enough. I went to Stonehenge, Westminster Abbey, and the Tower Bridge.

 

I tried not to dwell on Spike while I was in London. There were a lot of old buildings and houses that had been there when he was young. I knew he had walked these streets, and terrorized these streets. I wondered as we drove around at night if he was out there now.

 

About 4 weeks into my stay at the Council Headquarters, Giles and Wendy flew in. It was an amazing surprise. Both of them practice magic and sorcery, and the Council wanted to train them, as well as bring them up to speed on the details of the tracker. They referred to it as “tracer” which is British term meaning the same. I always felt they used “tracer” because it gave the sense that they weren’t following me 24/7, but would only use it to find me if I went missing. I never kidded myself that they weren’t following me 24/7.

 

The tracer could also sense my metabolic rates and functions. It wasn’t only to keep me safe, the information gathered would add to the body of knowledge on Slayers. I tried to keep in mind that I was part of a sisterhood. Just as the stories and legacies of the Slayers before me were making me safer and more efficient, so my contribution would help future Slayers.

 

I was glad to see Giles, but he turned out to be a bit of a buzzkill. He followed me around bugging me to make sure I’d taken advantage of this or that resource or training. Luckily, he spent several afternoons and evenings visiting friends or in Council meetings so Wendy and I got some BFF time.

 

They even let us loose in London! We had two days to wander around and do our own thing. True, by then I had the tracer, still, all thoughts of Slayerage were left behind for all thoughts of shopping and sightseeing. We were two young women on their own in a big city. Wendy and I went to a London club one night. The place was painfully loud and smoky, and actually pretty awful, but we got tipsy and danced and it was one more experience for our book of memories.

 

That, coupled with having met the surviving Slayer, went a long way in reminding me that even though I was different, I wasn’t SO different that I couldn’t have a normal life.

 

“Has Giles shown you where he grew up?” Wendy wondered.

 

“Nah, it’s not Slayer related and he’s all about maximizing my time here to focus on all things dangerous and creepy.”

 

“I’d like to see it. You know, I’ll bet his parents are still alive, he’s not very old. I’d love to meet Mrs. Giles.”

 

“And hear some stories about how he was as a boy!”

 

“I’ll bet he was cool, and we know he played sports.”

 

“Quite the footballer, is how he puts it,” I reminded her. “His father is on the Council, but I don’t think I’ve met him.”

 

I wondered if that was on purpose. Some of the Council members had been introduced to me as Ms. This or Mr. That, and some only by first name. It’s possible that I’d been hanging out with Giles’s dad and not even known it.

 

A few days before we left we met Giles’s younger BROTHER, who we didn’t know even existed! There was no mistaking the family resemblance, we could tell right away. His name was Randy (yeah, that was a joke in the show. A wink at the actual Randy Giles) Wendy instantly developed a massive crush.

 

I kind of hated for her that we met him so late on our trip, on the other hand sometimes it’s better when a crush doesn’t have too much time to ferment. She had only made it to the starry-eyed phase and brought home only happy memories of him.

 

It may sound like I’m comparing her crush on Randy with my feelings for Spike, but I’m not. What I felt for Spike wasn’t a crush, no matter that I’d used that word with my mother. In spite of all evidence to the contrary, I felt like I had Spike, and not just in that moment. No matter how many times I called myself stupid, I didn’t completely believe it. A crush is something hopeless. Spike and I weren’t hopeless, we were impossible.

 

I hadn’t been abandoned by Spike, I already knew he couldn’t be in my “big picture”, but he did stay with me as long as he could. That’s not a crush, it’s something in the hazy zone of “what the hell is going on here?” Spike and I weren’t together, but what we’d had was real.

 

Wendy wasn’t going to have any of that with Randy, not even some sad longing for sex with an older guy. It never got anywhere near that point. She got the good feelings without the overly confusing yearning or the embarrassment of rejection.

 

England was a blast, and though the trip included intense Slayer training, it still felt like a vacation. I came home feeling refreshed and with lots of great stories to tell my mom and sister, and lots of Slayer goodness to relate to Wesley, who had been holding down the fort in Collinsville.

 

I enrolled in the local community college for the Fall semester. Wendy was going to the State University, commuting to the local campus. She wanted to keep her hand in the supernatural and continue studying sorcery. The trip to England had made her even more gung-ho, and now there was some serious trouble brewing. We were definitely going to need her help. The trouble was of a magnitude that I hadn’t faced before. The timing of my Council visit wasn’t coincidental.

 

Xander enrolled in the community college with me.(Cordelia had gone off to greener pastures) Xander and I did a sort of dating thing. There had always been some interest on both sides, but he’d had Cordy and I was under lock and key.

 

Xander is hot. He’s funny and sweet and very down to earth. Down to earth is an attractive thing to a girl who straddles dimensions, has a totally chaotic life and got to meet the surviving Slayer with her nice little budding family. For a girl who was still reeling inside from a one night stand with a vampire, down to earth was very attractive. I could see settling down someday with someone LIKE Xander, if not Xander himself.

 

It’s clunky to change lanes from “just friends” to possibly something more. We skated around the issue. My lifestyle and serious relationships weren’t compatible, no matter how much Xander and I might have been. He knew what it meant to be a Slayer. Stability was out of the question and 22 was still four long years away. That is a long time to worry that the love of your life could die at any moment in a gruesome manner.

 

We played it slow, and cool. We attended parties and events together and we hung out on our own. We had never done that in High School. Our relationship was tentative but comfortable. We drove to campus together a few days a week, and Xander stayed for dinner at least once a week. It was really very lovely.

 

Car rides are a great way to get to know someone. The car is a nonthreatening place to talk. You’re not face to face, and if anything uncomfortable is said, it’s easy to act distracted or start fiddling with the radio.

 

The drive to the community college wasn’t long, but it was long enough for real conversation. Classes provided plenty of things to talk about that could serve as inroads to more personal subject matter. It was nearly a perfect crucible for a budding relationship.

 

My first semester, I came across a useful piece of information that helped me sort some things out. I was writing a research paper and in my reading I came across an article discussing what occurs hormonally before, during and after sex. Turns out that my feeling of belonging with Spike, and wanting to burrow into his side, was caused by a hormone released during the act and had nothing to do with me being a foolish, weepy girl.

 

Intense sex has that side effect, which is why I didn’t feel it with Scott. Now that I knew this, I could safely tuck away my feelings about what had happened, and in the future, avoid any embarrassing and foolish clinginess. It turns out mom was right, it’s just a human thing, not a stupid Buffy thing.

 

First semester was bumping along very nicely, academically and socially. Even if Xander and I weren’t hot and heavy it was nice to have a reliable date and partner for events. It was nice that it was him, he knew my Slayer secret which made things all kinds of easy, until in walked Big Evil, on its evil timeline doing its evil thing.

 

As much as I complained, when I was younger, about all the things my Watchers didn’t tell me, they were doing me a favor. After I turned 18 they began telling me the things they used to keep quiet. A lot of the time I wish they hadn’t. Well, that’s not quite true. I needed to know. I needed to be making informed decisions, but I wish I didn’t need to know.

 

Now I had informed right of refusal, but the weight of what was hanging in the balance meant that saying no wasn’t a realistic option. Knowing I could do something and that if I didn’t, the consequences for the world would be dire, led me to say yes when everything in me was screaming “Hell No!”

 

That winter, shit got real. Showdown at the Hell fissure complete with a mini earthquake, lightning, brimstone (that’s a real thing) and the earth trying to swallow yours truly.

 

I mean it, the actual earth was pulling me in and trying to close before I could crawl back out. I came out of it with a crushed leg. Wesley didn’t make it out. Wesley was gone, and we didn’t know if he died a normal human death or if he’d been sucked into a different dimension. We watched him go and never return.

 

“Save the Slayer,” was the last thing we heard him say. Xander and Wendy were coming to pull us out before it was too late. When Wes said that, they put all their attention on pulling me out first.

 

A crushed leg is unbearably painful, and it took a long long time to heal. But I DID heal. Wes was gone. No healing for him. I can’t tell you what that felt like. It wasn’t my fault Wes died, but something felt wrong about him dying before me since I was pretty much expected to take one for the team.

 

That was when Giles explained to me about Watchers and the lifetime vows they take. I needed to know that Wes went down for his own reasons. His vow wasn’t just to protect the current Slayer. He had other responsibilities and promises to keep.

 

Losing Wes hit all of us very hard. The good news was that our mission was partly successful. We didn’t accomplish all we had set out to do, but we averted a bigger disaster.

 

We rarely accomplished all we set out to do. 80% of the job is maintaining the status quo. The good days were when I went out and did some hand to hand combat and dusted some vamps or set fire to some demon’s lair. Those victories were clear cut. Now you see them, now you don’t. You know that there is one less bad guy in the world because you took them down yourself.

 

I wasn’t facing a major apocalypse every May, like the gang in the television show. Our aim was to address and avert things long before they got to that level. We hoped it would never come to a point to where a teen girl was all that was standing between our world and oblivion.

 

Many of the battles I faced were ritual. It wasn’t always fists and weapons flying. There were times when it WAS fists and weapons but it was more of a dual than a war. I was the representative of this (and weirdly a few other) supernatural realms.

 

I use the word supernatural because even though the world we know seems completely natural and relatively predictable to us, to other realms WE are the supernatural, and we make no sense to them at all.

 

Many of the issues the crew and I dealt with were boundary disputes and negotiations. There are boundaries between dimensions. They’ve been hammered out over the millennia via wars, heated negotiations, and, and poetryoccasionally, peaceful agreements.

 

Boundary agreements periodically need to be renegotiated or renewed. When that happened representatives from both sides meet to work things out. Sometimes this was a simple matter of a Council (or other organization) representative meeting with a parallel being from the other dimension. Other times it took the form of ritual “battle”. These battles ranged from events resembling interpreand poetry slams, to petty pissing contests, wrestling matches, and other feats of skill and strength.

 

Luckily for all of you, I was never called in for the interpretive dance or poetry slam rituals. I occasionally engaged in the petty pissing contests, and way more often in the wrestling, weaponry, and feats of strength. I lived for that! That was why Wes and Giles were so focused on me learning discipline and control.

 

Since many of these “battles” were ritualistic, had I hauled off and destroyed the opponent, it would have been disastrous for negotiations. I needed to “win” while leaving their representative to fight another day.

 

I’ll fess up now and admit that I didn’t always “win”. There are times when our side conceded and gave up property, boundaries or rights in some other dimension. Sometimes we had to concede things in OUR dimension to the other side. Many climate-related events have to do with losing or winning these confrontations. A bad hurricane season might be the result of having to concede control over a particular ocean current to the opposing side.

 

The last Ice Age was due to a loss of territories critical to climate control. The “Summer that wasn’t” of 1816, was a notable result of a boundary dispute that took several months to renegotiate.

 

I mentioned the four “elements” in the previous chapter: fire, water, earth, and air. Because they are recognized by many realms and dimensions, those are the things most often associated with these boundary disputes and agreements. At least those are the things YOU are most likely to understand. Things like volcanic eruptions, extreme weather conditions, , and earthquakes are linked to them.

 

The flip side is that what we (I and the interdimensional poetry slammers) do, affects those sorts of things in other dimensions. Agreemen and ritual confrontations are the best bet for all parties involved. It’s all about keeping the balance, but dimensions grow rambunctious and these things can sometimes blow up. Enter...full on or partial apocalypse.

 

There are many things between the realms that need to be regularly hashed out. Sometimes I was called upon to address those, and sometimes they required intervention of beings that exist in our realm but most of us aren’t aware of: demons, angels, earth spirits, elementals, and constructs (Dawn, as portrayed in the series, is an example of a construct).

 

I was kept pretty busy engaging in confrontations that wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense to outsiders. There were times that the things I did lead to the demise of beings or ecosystems in other realms and dimensions. That’s not insignificant. Being asked to do things that would destroy a realm I don’t understand and had never seen, did a psychological number on me. I had to trust that it was “for the best”, and that our best was always more important that their best. My early years as a Slayer, when I didn’t know what was what, were truly blissful compared to my later years.

 

Most of the time I was only dimly aware of what was truly at stake when we entered a confrontation. I knew that the power we faced in the battle in which we lost Wes, was big and dangerous, but it wasn’t until later that I found out how big, how dangerous and what they were after.

 

Human psychology is an odd thing. My crushed leg was, and I hope will forever be, the worst physical pain I will ever know. The idea that I might ever feel anything like that again makes me break out in cold sweats and have panic attacks. I think I might rather die than go through that again. Still, having lost Wes, and not knowing what it was we lost him to, I think it was better for me to have had my leg crushed than to have gotten out unscathed.

 

I don’t think I could have psychologically dealt with the experience had I not had the physical representation of it in the form of my injury. My leg was something I could tend to and make progress with. It made what it means to be a Slayer, real. The battle wasn’t at the Fissure to Hell this time, it had followed me home in both body and soul.

 

My bone was crushed, If I wasn’t the Slayer with Slayer healing I would limp and have pain to this day. Luckily, via the Council, I had the best medical care money could buy. I also had a lot of mental and emotional fallout that needed to be processed. Even the best psychologist the Council provided, couldn’t do the work for me. There is no surgery for the soul.

 

Xander was amazingly sweet and protective during the time I was recovering. I couldn’t drive, so he took me to and from campus nearly every day. He helped me with the wheelchair during the times I was confined to it.

 

Grief over Wes’s death, and Xander’s tender care of me brought us closer, but they also shifted the tone of our fledgling relationship. Xander was now in the role of taking care of me and not so much with the taking me on dates. The dynamic changed overnight.

 

My mom played a role in that too. When she spoke to Xander, a lot of the time they would be literally talking over my head as I sat in my wheelchair. She wasn’t relating to him as my potential boyfriend. They were coordinating how to get me to and from class and to my doctor’s appointments. There wasn’t a whole lot of “What do you two have planned for the weekend?” going on.

 

I have wondered what would have happened between Xander and me, had I not been injured. The shock and horror of losing Wes meant Xander worried and doted on me even more than he would have. We now knew that death, and things that might be worse than death, could happen to “one of us”. We’d had many lucky escapes before, but clearly, we weren’t immune.

 

In a sense, I was used to being doted on. That also comes with the Slayer gig. A lot is required, but I was also taken care of by two Watchers, the Council, and my amazing friends. None of them could ultimately protect me or relieve me of my responsibility, but they were there, even when I didn’t want them to be.

 

My injury made me more cognizant of just how much they were there, and I appreciated them more than I did before. Knowing what Wes did, and why he did it, I took my own role more seriously. I had, by then, accepted my fate as Slayer, but I hadn’t fully embraced it. I had been handed a script and had been doing a fair job of walking through the part. But I wasn’t noble. I had been brave only because I had to be, and because I never knew more than half of what was going on.

 

I wasn’t going to take a lifelong vow the way Wes and Giles had, but I decided to take one that would last the next few years. I wasn’t going to half-ass this. I wanted my time as Slayer to be more than an attempt to squeak by with the fewest scars and bruises.

 

Granted, there was only so much I could do post-surgery. Post three surgeries, the first, at the time of the event and two more over the next several weeks. I couldn’t be busting heads, but I could be taking my job to heart. And so another piece fell into place. I understood that I was not a Slayer, but THE Slayer. No matter how many had gone before me and how many would follow, for now, I was all there was.

 

My day would come if I wanted it to, to be like the Slayer I’d met in England. That could be my real someday. I was strong enough to do both. I didn’t know how, but I trusted that the pieces would keep falling into place, the way they had been doing, just when they were needed.

 

Funny how I became a better Slayer when I was out of commission and lying on my couch. Funny how a broken leg also helped me understand my heart.

 

“Buff…” Xander gave me a gentle nudge, he was holding my hand as we watched a movie. “You good?”

 

I offered him a sleepy smile in return. “Yeah, thanks…”

 

“I’ll make up the couch.”

 

I’d been sleeping downstairs again, after the third surgery.

 

“That’d be great,” I said with the stiff requisite gratitude you use with the nurse who’s just told you they're going to change your bandages.

 

His eyes were full of question. Had my tone given something away? Had he heard a piece fall into place, but it hadn’t fallen in quite the way he hoped it would.

 

I watched him make up my bed...like a friend, like a nurse, but not like a lover. Never like a lover. When he was done he smiled at me, pulled the cover back and held it open. “My lady.” He handed me in, my gallant but unsuccessful suitor.

 

I remembered Spike, naked in the dark, holding the blankets open, knowing I would get with the program if he gave me a moment to collect myself.

 

I smiled, thanked Xander, and crawled under the covers...alone.

 

**************************************

 

 

What it the Vampire Tribunal?

Vampires are rarely turned haphazardly, most are created to serve a role: slave, worker bee, servant, sex toy, friend or beloved. The terminology varies with the purpose a person is turned. A vampire who turned someone to make a slave of them isn’t going to refer to them as their child. There is no one term for the variety of relationships that exist. The terms sire, child, savior, fledge, project, lord, author, ward, dean, and master are all used. Usually, the senior vampire will take in its fledglings and train them. (I say they get domesticated, Spike prefers the term educated)

 

Newly minted vampires are violent blood addicts. Left to their own devices, most don’t make it and get taken out while they’re in the midst of a crazed killing spree. Insane bloodthirsty killers tend to draw attention to themselves and give vampires, in general, a bad name. Civilized vampires prefer not to be associated with the “common” variety.

 

About 750 years ago a group of reasonably domesticated vampires formed an alliance. They looked out for each other and shared information. Sometimes they set up raiding gangs that took out or took over, entire towns. It was loosely organized and mostly helped vampiress do terrible things without getting caught.

 

About 250 years ago a group of educated, rich vampires formed a club that was based on the earlier version, but classier. They turned their friends and created a successful, upper-class vampire society. They dabbled in magic and sorcery and would gather for gross rituals where they did terrible things and had bloody orgies with unwilling partners.

 

Eventually, this “gentleman’s club” for the rich and depraved, morphed into an organization that was less with “we’re rich and evil and can get away with it” and more about “lets not all get killed in a changing society.”

 

The Tribunal rose, from the remains of that “gentleman’s” club, to address wartime issues, including putting into service vampires who wanted to work in the war effort. Even vampires have national allegiances and political preferences, they also have unique powers that can prove useful in espionage and warfare.

 

The Tribunal used property and resources, left over from the bad boy’s club, to build their intelligence agency. The Tribunal is an information clearinghouse that uses espionage and diplomacy to make deals with whichever side of good or evil is most beneficial to vampires at the time.

 

Modern times are difficult for vampires. It’s harder to travel and kill then it was even 50 years ago. Vampires can provide cheap labor for bad guys. New vamps will follow nearly anyone who provides protection or blood and are often recruited by demons. It’s easy for newbie vampires to fall into the wrong hands, and draw negative attention to vampires as a race. The Tribunal addresses this by providing protection and livelihood to its own kind in exchange for money or service.

 

Remember TV Spike saying he wanted to keep the world around for dog racing and Happy Meals on legs? That’s the truth. Vampires aren’t interested in destroying society. They want to survive in a changing world, and they want to get back their gentleman’s club status where they attract and keep rich members and rebuild their exclusive society where they can be their bad selves.

 

Demons are doing better in that department these days but vampires haven’t given up hope. Rather than lose out entirely to the demons, the Vampire Tribunal provides services to its members and works with agencies like the Council who are fighting their mutual enemies. The Tribunal will just as happily side with the bad guys if it serves their purpose.

 

The Tribunal primarily serves Europe, and the Americas, and is making inroads into Africa.

A different and more secretive group operates in Asia.

Australia has a negligible vampire population.

The pacific islands have many vampires but they are dedicated to various demon groups and don’t work with the Tribunal or the Asian organization.

 

What is the Council?

There was a period in the history of the British Empire when the British upper class was funding a tremendous amount archeological excavation and collecting all over the world. Treasures and antiquities flowed into the country, including millions of items and writings related to magic, the supernatural, and ancient religions.

 

The men who funded the excavations formed a rich guy society. Sometimes they behaved like frat boys and were way too full of themselves. They used ritual chalices and bejeweled skulls as ashtrays or for kicks they’d stage a mummy unwrapping after dinner. One man bragged that he made his wife sleep in a gold encrusted mummy coffin.

 

Luckily they did allow scholars to access the treasures and books. As time passed the group became more interested in funding research and less interested in serving scotch and Haggis on the lid of an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus.

 

This group morphed into the Council for the Study and Preservation of the Transcendental, (not to be confused with the Society of Antiquaries). As the result of direct solicitation by scholars, donations, and bequests, the Council amassed the most comprehensive library and collection of things pertaining to the supernatural. (with the possible exception of the Asian Agency)

 

Recognizing that the value of its holdings went far beyond historical and artistic the Council dedicated itself to study and protect the items and information for the good of mankind and the realm in which we reside.

 

The Slayer line is of separate and unconnected origin. However, as the result of the Council’s sworn sacred duty, many years ago it took the office of the Slayer under its wing for protection and guidance.

 

This is why even the Council doesn’t know where a new Slayer will be called. They have to use sorcery or mundane detective skills to find her. It is also why the Slayer always maintains right of refusal. The Council does not control the Slayer, but they do watch over her, hence the term Watchers.

 

 

Buffy, are you as obsess about a normal life as the Buffy on the show? If yes, was it ever among the thing you argued with your Watchers?

The chapter you just read gives you some insight into how I felt about normal life when I was 18. It was a light at the end of the tunnel and having met Kelly, the Slayer with a family, I felt that I could one day have a life.

 

That made me a bit more relaxed about it because I felt like it was possible, but it also made me more focused on it, because… it was possible.

 

After we lost Wes, I decided that “normal” was going to be put on hold. The Slayer gig was the real deal and I needed to stay locked in that role. Too much was riding on it. I gave up on the idea of doing “normal” now, which was good, but I became more set on doing normal “then”. Unlike TV Buffy, who has no hope of a “then”, I believed I would get my chance.

 

Being in college was grounding. In high school, you are just doing what you are told, but in college, you get to set your own schedule, pick classes, move freely on and off campus, and I felt like I did have some control over my life and future. Even though I still had all my Slayer duties, I felt like I had a life. I was making choices then weren’t all being made for me.

 

I don’t want to give any of the story away, but I will end with this, yes, I was still very “obsessed” with the idea of a normal life. You will find out just how much if you stay tuned. 

 

Another question, what's your favorite color, music, song, and cartoon character? What? You had to at least expect these types of questions to pop up sometime soon! 

Yey! fun questions!

 

I’m not sure it’s exactly a color, but I like gold. The shiny kind. I like when blonde hair has that shiny gold thing happening, and I love gold jewelry. 

If we are talking about a color you could paint a wall, it’s lemon yellow. Happy, but still soft.

 

I like pop music, something I can bounce to, dance around the kitchen to, and drive to. I also like sweeping, powerful orchestral music, like Tchaikovsky which is also really fun to rock out to when I’m doing the dishes or using the punching bag, or thinking about having sex with Spike.

I like Rhianna big time, especially "Diamonds" I can't post the link but you can check it out on Youtube!

 

My favorite cartoon character is kind of a joke between me and a bunch of people who know me. It’s an old comic character named Sluggo, and you can probably guess why they would sometimes call me Sluggo.

 

A very special person (but not Spike) suggests I get a tattoo of Sluggo. 

As far as Saturday morning cartoons. (A thing in the USA) my two favorites only lasted a short time, "Galaxy High" and "Ghost busters". Again, I can't post the links, but you can find these on Youtube as well. Canceling "Galaxy High" was just wrong, wrong, wrong!


	9. The One Where Spike Comes Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One night a surprise visitor knocks on the door...

The One Where Spike Comes Back

 

To this day, my mother swears she had no idea who he was when she answered the door, but I’m still not convinced. How could she not?

 

I was 19. My leg was basically healed. I wasn’t 100%, but the job doesn’t have a lot of respect for sick time and it had waited long enough. I was back in the thick of it. My broken leg never came up on the TV show because it was WAY too much down time, and they never let me sustain an actual injury for more than one show.

 

I was still in school but not taking a full class load. What had been easy to maintain when my broken leg had given me a ton of downtime, was impossible to maintain when I was back on duty. I was taking only two classes. I was driving to campus with Xander only once a week and our budding...whatever it was, was withering from attrition and some vague sense, on both our ends, that “we” weren’t meant to be. I had long since quit sleeping on the couch, thank goodness.

 

I was up in my room doing Tai Chi (sort of) to Duran Duran music. Yeah, good luck picturing that one. I was actually watching myself do it in my mirror and it’s still hard for me to picture. It was some kind of wacky Slayer fusion. I did take my mission seriously, but they couldn’t expect me to ignore my own present day culture completely and go all Asian martial arts, British terminology and Latin incantations, right?

 

I admit I was sort of doing it ironically to begin with. I needed a break from studying, and I put the music on and then thought “Hey, maybe I can kill two birds!” Hence New Wave fusion Tai chi.

 

I didn’t hear the doorbell ring, my mother did. She opened the door, which technically, living in Collinsville and me being the Slayer, she should never have done. Sometimes she forgot to play by the rules, sometimes she just didn’t care. I don’t know which it was that night.

 

She always looks out the peephole, but I’m not sure what good that did. A Strange man on the porch at night, even in small town USA that screams “don’t answer the door” but she did it anyway.

 

“Yes?”

 

“Is Buffy here?”

 

She looked him up and down. OK, now see what I mean here? Nice looking older guy comes to the front door asking for me, and she’s not suspicious that this might be him?

 

“Yes, would you like to come in?” SERIOUSLY MOM!!!!

 

“No, that’s right nice of you but I can wait for her here.”

 

So this is when she gets suspicious. Maybe it’s a mom thing, but if a guy won’t come in, they take it as a bad sign. Apparently, she cut him a look of disapproval.

 

“Wait while I get her, may I ask who’s calling?”

 

Apparently, he was dumbstruck. Not expecting that one. Totally at a loss for words, which is saying something. Spike often doesn’t say anything, but he never can’t actually think of something to say.

 

He stood there confused.

 

“Do you have a name?”

 

“Um, well…” He scratched his ear. “Could you tell her it’s business?”

 

This is when she got testy. After all, she KNOWS what business I am in.

 

“No, I don’t think that’s good enough Mr?....”

 

“Bell, of the Tribunal,” he said quickly, it was clear he’d better give her an answer. He knew my mother had a shotgun and by this time she was wicked accurate with the crossbow, which we kept hanging on the wall, right there, to warn off intruders.

 

“Mr. Bell…of the Tribunal?” She cocked her head the way she does. My mom can worm just about anything out of anyone by simply repeating questions and cocking her head. “And which Tribunal would that be?”

 

“Amsterdam Tribunal,” he said with a bit more confidence.

 

“Don’t you think it’s rather late to come calling, Mr. Bell? If this is business related you might want to speak with Mr. Giles.” She was a serious hard ass.

 

Spike gave up. He apologized, turned tail and walked off into the night. THEN my mom called me downstairs.

 

“I don’t know what’s going on Buffy, but a man was just here. Said he was a Mr. Bell from Amsterdam, said he was here on business.”

 

“So where is he?”

 

“He left. He was all manners until I started asking questions. I even asked him in and he said no, he’d wait, so I knew something was up. I told him to go talk to Giles.”

 

“You opened the door to a stranger at night and invited him IN???” She must have been out of her mind.

 

“It’s not like I’m not armed honey,” she reminded me. Still!

 

“Mr. Bell?”

 

“He said it was about business, something about a Tribunal.”

 

“The Vampire Tribunal?”

 

“He didn’t say anything about vampires.”

 

There was a knock on the door. “I’ll get it,” I told her.

 

“I’ll get the crossbow,” she said, now that she knew the Tribunal had to do with vampires.

 

I’m sure we looked rather formidable. Two Summers women with our tough girl, no-nonsense, faces on.

 

“Can I help--” I said as I was opening the door. It was him. I stopped speaking mid-word. I have never seen anyone look at me the way he did in that moment. Fear, anticipation, relief, joy, lust…

 

“Buffy.” He was obviously surprised that I’d answered the door, he’d been anticipating round two with my mother.

 

“Is it him again?” She pushed forward from behind me.

 

“No, mom, it’s ok…I know him.” I dismissed her but she went nowhere. He put his hands up in mock surrender.

 

“Ms. Summers.” He ducked his head.

 

“Mr. Bell.” Her lips were tight, but she didn’t have the crossbow aimed at him any longer.

 

I was surprised he knew my last name, even though, as I’ve said, the Tribunal had all that information on me. Strange thing to think of right then. Here he is, I haven’t seen him in two years, wasn’t even sure he was still alive and I’m impressed that he knew my last name. The mind is a funny thing.

 

“Mom, you can put the crossbow away,” I told her, it gave me a second to look at something other than Spike.

 

He was still looking at me 1000 different ways at once. I was pretty sure my face was going to do the same thing so I tried not to look directly at him.

 

“Mom, I’m just going to go outside and talk to him.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“Yes, it’s OK.”

 

“You’re not going to go and tell her I’m harmless are you?” he said to me very quietly. “Don’t insult a bloke, Luv.”

 

I stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind me. I guessed she was probably listening through the door so I walked down the three steps and onto the little walk between the house and the street.

 

“Maybe I should have come to the window.” He pointed towards the roof.

 

Then there we were face to face, toe to toe, both of us looking at our feet.

 

“I heard you were hurt.” I probably don’t need to mention that he didn’t say this in a “so now you’ll be easy pickings” kind of way. He sounded concerned. Troubled.

 

“Yeah, broken leg. It’s better now.” I noticed he’d taken my hands in his and was inspecting them as if they had been the part I’d hurt and he wanted to make sure I really was in one piece.

 

“Oh, well, that’s alright then.” He dropped my hands.

 

“So that’s it? Your Tribunal business? Come and authenticate the extent of my injuries.” I made it sound like a joke, not like I was being snippy.

 

Two beats of silence from him, as he tried to assess if I was making a joke or being snippy. Two beats of silence for HIM to get over himself. HA!

 

“Damn the Tribunal, I’m askin’ for myself. ” He spat out the words.

 

This made me ridiculously happy. Once again, the first person he saw when he came to town was me!

 

The next logical thing to do was ask why he was here. I knew he wasn’t going to hurt me, but it was entirely possible that he wanted to pump me for information, or had come to retrieve the leg.

 

Or maybe he was just hoping for another round. In vampire time, two years is like a week in regular people time, this could actually be his idea of calling up the next day. See how I tried to talk myself out of things? especially GOOD things?

 

As we stood there all weirdly tongue tied, I just wanted to be up against him and feel his arms around me. This was unfair. That whole hormone thing was supposed to a post-coital response, it wasn’t supposed to last two years and two near death experiences long.

 

“I knew I wanted to see you but I didn’t know how God damned much until--” then he stopped talking, and I did look up and he almost looked like he was in pain.

 

I knew he wanted to grab me, and I wanted him to grab me but I didn’t know how to make it happen, and he was scared. I didn’t want to be a little idiot again, just in case he hadn’t come here for the reason I hoped he had. It wasn’t like we had some history of lovey-dovey behavior to fall back on. We had nothing but a big pile of awkward and “we’re not supposed to be doing this.” But he didn’t usually let that sort of thing bother him.

 

“So that’s your mother. She’s quite scary.”

 

“Runs in the family. My sister is a sharp shooter.”

 

He recognized that was a joke and he chuckled. “Heard you lost a Watcher.” His voice was serious now.

 

“Yeah, it was bad, he fell, well, got pulled into…” I didn’t want to turn it into small talk. Wes deserved better than that. “And my leg got crushed.”

 

“Hurts like a bitch.” Apparently, he knew first hand.

 

He muttered something in another language that I think was French. Spike speaks several languages and he uses terms from them in normal conversation. When he says them, I know what he means, but not the actual translation, so I can’t write most of them here. I didn’t know him then, or the way he peppered his English with foreign phrases. I had no idea what he said or what he meant or if it was good or bad.

 

Should I ask him where he’d been? Or would that make me the bitchy wife waiting on the porch, tapping her foot, checking her watch and brandishing a frying pan?

 

The next thing he said was simple. “Are you going to hurt me?” Absolutely no pretense at all. This was the Spike I knew.

 

“Are you going to give me a reason to?” Basically the same old Slayer HE knew.

 

“Could we? I mean…nice night for a walk,” he suggested.

 

“Are you afraid of my mother?”

 

“Wouldn’t you be in my position? She aimed a crossbow at me.”

 

“That’s because you wouldn’t come in.” Twisted logic

 

“I told you I wouldn’t. Not unless YOU invited me,” he reminded me.

 

It made no sense to read anything into that, I mean he had been gone two years. Probably around the globe at least once, and most likely with his girlfriend doing who and what I probably didn’t even want to know.

 

“Yes, you did.” And I know I smiled because I couldn’t help it. He’d said everything I needed to know.

 

“Buffy, is everything ok?” my mother called.

 

“Yes mom, it’s fine. I promise.” I gave a little laugh.

 

“It was easier when I came in through the window.” He nodded towards the porch.

 

Was it? Easier to do what?

 

“If you want to go back inside…” He was being all gentlemanly, and I didn’t like it. It felt wrong. It felt like he was being dishonest. I mean, maybe once a long time ago he WAS a gentleman but he hadn’t been for a very long time.

 

“Yeah, maybe I should.” I was testing him. It’s one of those girl things that guys hate, but hey, I’m a girl, I earned the right fair and square.

 

“Ok then. Glad the leg healed up. Tally ho.” It’s one of those Spike things. You’d think it was even funnier if you saw him say it because he SO does not fit the part.

 

I walked back to the house very slowly, fingers crossed, hoping he’d say something, call me back, follow me. Nothing. I turned and looked back before I opened the door and he was gone.

 

“OK, so who was that character?” My mom grilled me immediately.

 

“He really is from the Tribunal. Checking up on my leg, actually. I know it sounds weird but sometimes the Council and the Tribunal share information. He’s like a delegate or something.”

 

“He called you by your name.” Nothing gets past her. “I mean, he didn’t refer to you as the Slayer, and he didn’t call you Ms. Summers.”

 

“I guess manners just aren’t what they used to be.” Nothing like a chipper response to diffuse a tricky situation.

 

“Sounds like that was something he should be meeting Giles about, not coming and knocking on our door at all hours of the night.”

 

“Mom, it’s not even 9 o’clock.” She was getting WAY too worked up over this and I really didn’t want to deal.

 

“Last I checked business hours are 9-5.” She made a good point. “Buffy, was that man a vampire?”

 

Thing is, my mom actually hadn’t seen many vampires. Like I’ve said, they didn’t run rampant in the street and mostly I didn’t bring my work home with me. I’m guessing she’d seen a few, but none in full fang. (that’s what we call it)

 

“Yes, mom, which is why you shouldn’t answer the door at night and invite men into the house.” I know I sounded patronizing, but SERIOUSLY!

 

“So vampires just go around knocking on doors like door to door salesmen?” She found this as stupid as she made it sound.

 

“Not their usual MO, he really was here on business and most vampires do lay lower than that. He was trying to stay official.”

 

“He should have some sort of badge or ID card. I mean, I could have sent a bolt right through him!” She motioned to the crossbow.

 

“You’re right, their protocol is sadly lacking. I’ll bring it up with Giles.”

 

“He didn’t stay very long.”

 

For some reason, her saying that gutted me. It hurt so shockingly much I wondered if she hadn’t done it on purpose, trying to get me to admit to something. It felt like she was twisting a knife in my liver, reminding me how he didn’t stay then and didn’t stay now. It wasn’t true. She didn’t know.

 

“I should go finish my Tai Chi.” I wanted to get out of there before I screamed and threw things and broke something.

 

“Buffy, why did he come here?” she said to my back as I headed up the stairs.

 

“He said he wanted to know if my leg was better.” I shrugged. “He didn’t come to hurt me. He COULDN’T hurt me, mom. He’s just a vampire.” By that time she pretty much understood that the average vampire (which Spike was not) didn’t stand a chance against me but she also knew that there were other ways in which I was vulnerable.

 

“I guess he needed to see for himself that I was alright.” I kept walking. There, I’d said it. The truth. Can’t argue with the truth. He needed to see it for himself.

 

I went back to my room. The mood that allowed me to mix New Wave pop-rock with ancient martial arts had flown the coop. I tried to decide between the music…or the Tai chi…eeny, meeny, minie…

 

Tap, tap, tap...I went to the window and pulled it up.

 

“Shall we try this again?” he suggested.

 

I don’t know if my face showed it but I felt my smile rise all the way from my toes.

 

“I guess you weren’t a Mormon in your previous life, the whole door to door thing doesn’t really work for you,” I teased.

 

“Yeah.” He stayed squatting on the roof, even when I moved aside. He wasn’t going to come in until I asked him to.

 

“Come in Spike.” I felt that smile surging up through me.

 

He dropped lightly in. Looked around, much like he had the first time, and sighed.

 

He walked to the door and locked it. This was the Spike I knew. He took off his jacket and threw it over my chair, then sat on the bed, hauled me onto his lap and said: “It’s been too long for you to tell me everything, so just tell me the good stuff.”

 

Where to begin, where to begin?

 

He was looking up into my face jovially and then his composure fell apart. His smile, his too bright eyes, even his loose tone of voice crumpled and fell to the floor leaving only hungry eyes and a hard mouth. He pulled me to him and kissed me hard, then pulled back just far enough to say “Lord, how I’ve missed you.”

 

There are women everywhere, women he could have by charm or by force...

 

I searched his eyes, looking deep into them, looking and looking and waiting for him to say, 'stop', to look away, to put up a wall that said ‘no further”. He didn’t, he just kept looking into mine. It sounds sappy and cliché but that isn’t how it felt. It felt important. Necessary.

 

His arms were around me tight and he rocked me just a little. Then a thought came to him and he set me down beside him on the bed. He went and fished through his jacket pocket and pulled out a wrinkled handful of dirty silk. “For you.” He held it out.

 

“It’s not part of that guy is it?” My nose was wrinkled.

 

His face beamed because he knew that I knew what he had done, switched the body parts.

 

He put it into my hand and put my other hand on top of it. “For you,” he repeated.

 

I gave him a worried look which he met with a reassuring one of his own. I was hopeful but afraid. Afraid it was going to be something “business” related and I would find out that indeed he had come as an emissary for the Tribunal and not to see me, after all.

 

I unwrapped the silk, peach colored with what looked like soot or ashes on it. Inside lay a crucifix, about 4 inches tall. It was dark wood with a silver image of Christ. There was a jewel set into each hand and foot where the nails would have been. At the end of each arm of the cross, was a silver band.

 

“It’s a reliquary, pieces of the true cross in there, and, if you believe it, a thread from Christ’s swaddling cloths.”

 

Holding it, I felt power, good power. The kind that would keep me safe.

 

“You carried this?” Hello, vampire, crucifix with actual relics embedded in it.

 

He came and sat beside me on the bed. “Belongs with you. It’ll help keep you safe.”

 

“How did you carry this without burning a hole in yourself?”

 

“I was careful,” was all he would say.

 

“Thank you.” I know I was frowning just a little. It was an amazing gift. An incredibly dangerous gift for him to be carrying to me. Sure he’d touched the relic of St Badass, but that had been a relic of evil. The crucifix was everything deadly to a vampire. Still, this could be considered job-related. The heart of a young woman, at least this young woman needed a LOT of reassurance.

 

He was studying my face, disappointed at what he saw. I was holding the crucifix, gazing down at it. I rubbed at the silver with the silk cloth, the metal began to brighten.

 

“It’s a relic, Luv. Be careful, keep it in a good place.” He eyed it nervously.

 

“Thank you,” I said again, this time with less hesitation. He nodded at me, but I could still see disappointment in his face. I didn’t know what he wanted from me.

 

When I leaned to place the crucifix on my bed table he jerked away. He watched me lay it down and sit back upright.

 

“I wish I’d had it before, when I had the leg. Might have kept you safe from those bastards.”

 

“You did keep me safe, they couldn’t--”

 

“I’d give a lot to have seen their faces.” He grinned at the thought, ignoring my statement that he’d helped me.

 

“It was epic,” I assured him, and his grin widened. I wanted to crawl back into his lap. I wondered if any residual energy from the crucifix might be clinging to me and maybe I shouldn’t touch him. His hands were twitching like they were hungry for me.

 

Settle down Buffy, settle down. It was two years ago, two sodding years ago.

 

He was reading my expression. He gets a certain look when he does it. He stops taking in all other stimuli. The only things he focuses on are heart beat and expression. He says it isn’t IN the eyes, it’s around them, and around the lips. Those are the tiny muscles that say everything.

 

If he can hold a person’s hand it’s even better. He says you can read a lot via the muscles in the upper portion of a person’s palm, more so than in the fingers, because it is in those muscles that all movements of the fingers generate. He says it’s as reliable as if they were typing the answers to all your questions right out in front of you.

 

He was reading my expression, and honestly, I wasn’t trying to hide anything, not now. I didn’t want him to go away. He smiled as soon as I thought it because he read it.

 

He went and sat against my headboard and pulled me up beside him, his arms around me. He played with my fingers as I told him about things that had happened since we last saw each other. He asked about Mrs. Abrosia’s cats, and the classes I was taking, and he traced over new scars he noticed on my hands and arms. I told him of my trip to England and admitted that I’d thought about him and wondered if I had been to any of the places he’d lived.

 

“Wish I’d known you were there.”

 

“We could have taken tea at the Council headquarters.”

 

“Could have whisked you off into the night’s more like it.”

 

“You were there?”

 

He nodded. “Funny that, hadn’t been for quite awhile, I felt a little homesick.”

 

“Buffy?” My mom was at the door.

 

I sat up, away from Spike.

 

“I thought I heard voices.”

 

I couldn’t really tell her I was on the phone because then she would have heard just one voice, mine.

 

Spike watched me cooly, gauging my reaction, giving me time to decide how to handle this. It was all on me. He would do whatever I wanted him to.

 

“It’s ok mom. I’m talking to Mr. Bell.” that last part felt so silly, that I know it came out sounding like a question.

 

“Would you like to offer your guest a drink?”

 

I wondered if she was trying to be funny, because by now she knew he was a vampire, and offering a drink to a vampire?

 

I walked to the door and unlocked it. Spike was still sitting on my bed, against the headboard. He looked completely unflustered except that he frowned at his feet, noticing he still had his shoes on and that it wasn’t proper to have one’s shoes upon the bed.

 

I opened the door all the way so my mother could take in the scene. Her eyes darted around. I got the idea she was checking out the room to see if there’d been a fight or forced entry. Everything was in place and looking quite mundane, other than the handsome, clearly older, man who was comfortably seated on her daughter’s bed. Her eyes fixed on him and he rose and walked towards the door. I moved aside and she entered.

 

“Mom, this is Spike.” That sounded so weird coming out of my mouth.

 

He held out his hand to her. “Pleased to meet you Ms. Summers.”

 

She took his hand to shake it but he brought it to his lips for a hint of a kiss. This would seem totally lame except it came so naturally to him that it worked.

 

That’s the thing with Spike, he’s been around forever. So many things come naturally to him, that hardly anything he does feels forced. He has a ready reaction or comment to just about anything. He’s not easy to surprise.

 

“Spike?” Mom repeated.

 

“Originally William Bell, Spike is my business name.” That wicked wonderful smile transformed his face. The smile that makes mothers distrust him, the smile that means they probably should.

 

“He brought me something,” I said, wanting to regain control of the situation and calm my mother’s ruffled feathers. After all, she’d been led to believe he’d left, yet here he still was, in her daughter’s room, behind a locked door.

 

I motioned her towards my table so she could look at the crucifix in the light. “It has a piece of the true cross in it,” I told her.

 

She picked it up, and looked confusedly at Spike…crosses?…vampires?…

 

“He brought it to keep me safe,” I explained.

 

“So you two are friends,” she said, waiting for me to either confirm or deny it.

 

“Associates,” he provided.

 

There were so many holes in this story... Why hadn’t he given the crucifix to her? Why hadn’t he given it to me when I came out to speak with him? Why had I led her to believe he’d left and then let him in my window? And why was the darned door locked?

 

We had a little three-way standoff for a few seconds. Then Spike said. “I can go.”

 

My mother watched him reach for his jacket. “Spike…” I put my hand on his arm to still him.

 

My mother’s eyes fixed at the point where we were touching.

 

“It’s OK. I’ve overstayed my welcome.”

 

“You don’t need to leave through the window,” she said. “You can come in and out the door like “associates” do.”

 

He chuckled at her. I felt awkward. I was in the middle of their polite standoff, the reason for their polite standoff. Neither Spike nor my mother was the type to back down, and while both of them could be very diplomatic, I had the feeling that this wasn’t an issue either of them would tip toe around.

 

Stupidest of all was that I wasn’t exactly sure what the nature of Spike’s visit was. I knew what I hoped. I knew what I suspected, but I didn’t know for certain.

 

“Can I call for you again? Tomorrow?” He looked from me to my mother, apparently asking both of our permissions. I must have looked panicked. I didn’t want him to go. Not now. Who knew what might happen in 24 hours, what if he didn’t come back?

 

He put his hand over mine and met my eye. “Tomorrow?”

 

Two years worth of feelings plowed through me, feelings that I had been afraid to acknowledge, own and express. I had talked about it, cried about it, worried about it. I had lived with doubt and fear, wondering the entire time if I was a foolish twit. With one touch and look he told me I was not.

 

I don’t know how much my mother read into the look that passed between us. I felt completely transparent and exposed.

 

Both of us watched Spike drape his jacket over his arm and take his leave down the stairs, unhurried, in his usual graceful way.

 

When we heard the door open and shut my mother turned to me.

 

“Buffy, who is he?”

 

My mind flipped through all the possible answers. Vampire, Tribunal emissary, killer of the neighbor’s cats, trafficker of relics, charmer, a debaucher of virgins, worldwide bad boy, thief of her daughter’s heart...

 

“He’s the one mom.” I met her eye. I didn’t know what else to say.

 

“The one.” We were speaking in code but we understood each other so it didn’t matter.

 

She came and put her arm around me. “He certainly is good looking,” she said with a sigh.

 

“Mom?” I was asking her permission. Knowing what she knew, was she was going to be OK with him calling for me?

 

She cut her eyes to me.

 

“He didn’t skip out on me. What I told you, it happened, but he didn’t just leave.”

 

“That was right before you went missing,” she pointed out, expecting me to go from there.

 

“That wasn’t because of Spike. In fact, he did something that saved me. Not just me, it prevented some really bad things from happening.”

 

“Buffy, I don’t know the entire story, but I think I’ve figured out that you were kidnapped, beaten, traumatized and ended up in a psychiatric facility, and now you’re saying that Mr. Bell played a role in that and all the upset that followed.”

 

“It’s likely they would have killed me if he hadn’t done…He stopped their plot. He took something from them that they needed to complete their ritual. They paid him a lot of money to bring them something and he didn’t give them what they needed.”

 

“He protected you?”

 

“I think so.” I looked over at the crucifix.

 

She ran her hands over my hair and took my face between her palms. “You were much too young. You ARE too young. For all of this. But there is no escape, so what am I supposed to do? Tell you no? Give you a curfew? Go fight evil but be home by midnight and no sleeping with the enemy?”

 

I put my hands over hers, I had all the same questions she did. I wished she could say those things and make everything change, and make it all make sense. But she couldn’t. You couldn’t unsee what you had seen. She knew who Spike was, and she had seen him in my space, seen his hand on my arm…This wasn’t something she could say “no” to. Words wouldn’t change this.

 

She could say “not in my house”, but where would that leave any of us? I barely knew him, but both she and I knew that if she said “no”, I would follow him.

 

She looked at me with a profound sadness in her eyes. “If there had been a way to protect you from this…” she began.

 

“Yeah, I know. But mom, it’s OK. It really is. All of it. It’s not easy, but it is OK. Don’t hate him.”

 

“I saw you crying,” she reminded me.

 

“And you told me it’s part of life, and you were right.”

 

“That was before I knew he was a vampire, and my god Buffy, how old is he?”

 

My shoulders began to shake, it was all so absurd. I didn’t even know the answer to her question. “I think he’s so old that it doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

 

“Buffy, why?”

 

Maybe I should have had a ready answer, mature and intelligent, but I wasn’t sure there was one. Telling her that I liked him because he didn’t rush me or push me seemed insane given the circumstances. He’d had sex with a 17 yr old.

 

He was patient with me. He was kind and funny. He teased with me and didn’t much care whether or not we were supposed to be serious. He was irreverent as much in one direction as another.

 

He was different from anyone I had ever known, and somehow, in all of that he cared about me. I didn’t even know what that meant. A vampire caring about a person? ANY person? Yet, there was the crucifix sitting on my bedside table.

 

He’d fuck me brainless and the next time I saw him bring me a priceless, supernatural relic that could have turned him to dust if he accidentally touched it. See what I mean about irreverent? He had his own way of doing things and they all made perfect sense in his universe.

 

“So you’re going to let me see him tomorrow?” I asked, even though we both knew that the real question was whether or not she was willing to accept it. I would be seeing him, one way or another.

 

“Yes, you can see him tomorrow.” She gave a small rueful smile, resigning herself to the circumstances. “Maybe not the day after, but yes, you can see him tomorrow.”

 

I opened my mouth to speak and nearly said ‘I’m sorry’, but realized I wasn’t. There was nothing to apologize for. I wasn’t sorry I’d been with him two years ago and I certainly wasn’t sorry he had come back.

 

“You might like him,” I said instead.

 

She gave me a look, then hugged me and went to her room.

 

I wanted to go out into the night and find him. I wanted him to be waiting outside my window. I wanted to sleep next to him, but I knew he was gone for the night.

 

I held onto the crucifix as I lie in the dark. I thought of the thousands of years of struggle between good and evil it represented. People had lived and loved and suffered and died in the fight. This crucifix had passed through maybe ten thousand hands before it found its way to me. To my hand, to my bed, and to my mission here at the Fissure to Hell. And it had arrived by means of a vampire.

 

************************************************

 

Q&A

 

Where did they get the ideas for Angel TV? And what were Angel's thoughts about having a show on his own?

Due to the success of BTVS, Angel talked to the network about a show of his own. He had decades of stories for them to cherrypick from, and when he had his own show he wasn’t playing second fiddle to the Slayer anymore. Nor was he her teenage love interest. Angel loves being in the spotlight. 

The plots for his show came from his personal collaboration with the writers.

 

Do you read the comics version of yourselves, and I also want to know your input on the matter. 

I don’t read them regularly. I’m familiar with them but comic books are not my thing. They are based on the characters from the TV program. I had already sold my rights for them to use my character, so they can do whatever they want with them. 

When I do look at them, it’s just like I’m reading a comic book about any fictional character. Even the TV Buffy often feels quite removed from me, the comic book character feels like a totally made up person.

Spike does like comic books, and I think he's read all of the Buffy comics. He has mixed feelings about them, some he loves, others not so much. He pretty much treats them as if they are just fictional characters too. He critiques story lines and art. I've heard him laughing a lot while reading them, so I know they DO amuse him! 

I’ve never been asked for input or offered any.

 

Do you exchange puns with your opponents, if so, where do you get them? I write about you and I have a hard time thinking about really good Buffy puns for your character. Got any good suggestions on how I can do that?

Well...I like to think I’m pretty funny! When I’m actually fighting I don’t think I throw puns and jokes around too much. I mostly concentrate on what I am doing, but I have been known to keep a running monolog going under my breath. 

When the crew and I were hanging out I think I was pretty witty. Giles is really good with puns, but he does them very subtly and it’s like...damn…

I think I am more with the witty quips than actual puns. 

TV Buffy had some great writers who wrote hers. So I don’t think I can help you out there. All I can think of is this...you know how when you are around someone a lot, you tend to pick up some of their habits and sayings?

Sometimes when I’m talking to someone who knows both of us, I’ll say something and they’ll be like “That sounds just like something Spike would say.” 

And it’s not actually something he said, it’s just LIKE him because I sort of know how he thinks. So I’d say just listen to the way “Buffy” talks on the show or in your head (or in this book!) and then maybe you’ll start writing in ways that sound like Buffy because you’ve hung around with her so much.

 

I’m really touched that you write about me! That’s pretty neat. I hope you make me look (and sound) better than I am. Make me really pretty, and smart, and funny, and the best daughter and friend ever. And a good sister and….well, you get the idea.


	10. The One Where My Mother and Spike Play Backgammon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spike and Joyce find their own way to communicate and Spike and Buffy reconnect.

The One Where Spike and My Mother Play Backgammon

 

I’ve brought up the issue resentment before. It came in waves and was aimed at different things in turn. That year, finally back on my feet and admittedly feeling antsy from being physically out of commission for so long, I resented school.

 

This was illogical, but resentments so often are. I enjoyed my classes, and I’d been doing well in them. Now I had cut down on my class load and my grades were still falling behind as I tried to catch up on Slayer duties. What had provided pride and gratification, had deteriorated into another opportunity for failure. School had been the one quantifiable measure that Buffy was doing well, now it was the quantifiable measure that I wasn't.

 

Giles was trying to fill the role of two Watchers, and his methods were heavy-handed and awkward. I was well aware of my calling and responsibilities, but he felt he needed to remind me every day, sometimes it felt like every hour. He lacked the finesse of Wes and I think he was going through his own identity crisis. I didn’t recognize it then, for what it was. I just knew he was always on my back, and when he thought he was being encouraging it came out as a litany of my failures.

 

All the things he said to me, were things he probably lay awake at night saying to himself. Wes’s void left Giles feeling painfully inadequate. He knew he couldn’t fill that role, and it ate at him, even though none of us expected him to fill it.

 

Believing that I might survive the Slayer gig, my brain had taken up a new mantra: later. I could finish college later. I could have a hobby, later. I could have boyfriends later.

 

Boyfriends would have to come later since that thing with Xander never took flight. If it hadn’t worked out with him, it wasn’t going to work with anyone. Clearly, my only shot at a relationship was to muscle it out until my 22nd birthday. I wanted the issue to become a non-issue. I wanted everything to become a non-issue.

 

My libido, which was so out of control at 17 had simmered down. I think I aged out of the worst of it, plus I got handier with the masturbation thing. (just telling it like it is) I had mentally matured enough to be able to put sex into some kind of context. I had gained much of that through meeting the former Slayer and coming to believe that there would be a time and place where I could play catch up on everything I’d missed. I didn’t have to be the poster child for “live fast, die young”.

 

I hadn’t been kidding when I told Spike, at age 17, that he’d ruined me for other men. Part of me was terrified that sex with someone else wouldn’t be as mind blowing as it had been with him, and another part of me was worried that it might. I was scared to explore, out of fear of confusing myself further. No matter which way it went it would give me one more thing I would have to process. I hadn’t handled the first time gracefully, and I didn’t want to feel stupid again. I didn’t want to feel attached again.

 

If things had worked out between me and Xander, I would have felt safe enough with him to work through my issues. I would have accepted that sex would be nothing like it had been with Spike. It would be vastly different, but for the right reasons.

 

Sex with Spike had been the result of raging hormones and old fashioned teen rebellion. I got exactly the kind of experience one would expect, based on those motives and my insane choice of partner. It wouldn’t have been like that with Xander, and that would have been fine.

 

Except something in me knew that I would miss the uncontrolled fury. I could probably get over it but I WOULD miss it. I wasn’t even WITH Xander and the thought alone made me kind of sad. Spike may not have ruined me, but he’d certainly altered me. You can’t unsee what you’ve seen.

 

I’d get over it, I’d move on but I would never ever forget. It wasn’t just the wild ride of the sex itself, because honestly the amount of time between him locking my door and pulling me down next to him satiated, couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, It was the way that I felt afterward that was seared onto my heart.

 

I wanted to feel that level of innate belonging with Xander, and I was afraid I wouldn’t. What if Xander and I had a great friendship and it grew into something more, a wonderful, warm, fun something more and then we got into bed and I didn’t feel that raw, throbbing need and that sense of belonging. It would be terrible. There were times I was willing to risk it and take the chance but most of the time I was not.

 

Of course, it became a moot point when Xander became my nanny. We never spoke about how close we had come to being something very different. I regret that we never acknowledged the feelings we had. There never seemed a time that made sense and I didn’t know the words.

 

What was I going to say? Hey, were we falling in love or did I imagine that? Even saying “I’m sorry it didn’t work out.” sounded wrong. I both was, and I wasn’t, sorry. The more time that passed the truer that became. There were moments I felt like I lost a great opportunity, and times when I said to myself wow, I’m glad I dodged that bullet.

 

Years later, a veiled reference was occasionally made about the time we were together, but even then no one stopped long enough to think about what that really meant. Looking back, I’m sure that among our friends there had been speculation about just what our relationship was, but they didn’t bring it up either.

 

My mother, however, did bring it up. At first, she thought I was being evasive when I told her I didn’t know what had happened that changed things. I told her that things were different after I broke my leg. She said she understood that such an injury would make things more difficult. I can see her point, how the heck does ANYONE have sex with a full leg cast? I explained that wasn’t the problem, that it had to do with the way he took care of me.

 

“You’re relationship is on the rocks because he takes CARE of you? Buffy, are you insane?”

 

I knew saying that it sapped the romance out of things was going to make me sound like I was 13 and waiting for a knight who would carry me away, as opposed to a knight who doted on me, was tender with me, and played cards with me in doctor’s waiting rooms.

 

It was yet another way that Spike had ruined me for other men. While our encounter wasn’t exactly romantic, it was dramatic. He’d definitely swept me off my feet. No matter how amazing, gentle and kind Xander was he’d lost that opportunity the first time he offered to push my wheelchair.

 

I tried and tried to put what happened with Spike behind me and out of my mind. I managed not to wait for him but I couldn’t unsee it, and unfeel it. Even when I thought he might be dead, I couldn’t erase it from my mind.

 

“Maybe later, maybe when all of this is over,” my mother said. “It’s too soon for you to find ‘the one’. If you and Xander are meant to be, it will happen.”

 

I knew it wouldn’t, but I didn’t tell her that.

 

I did begin to trust Time. Over and over pieces of my life kept falling into place. When I needed to be able to address a thing, somehow I was able to. I decided that when the time came, the way I felt about Spike would change and I would be able to move on and have a relationship.

 

Someday I’d get over this being “ruined for other men” business. I’d realize that one night at age 17 wasn’t going to define my sex life for the next 6 decades (see how optimistic I was!). I couldn’t force it any more than I’d been able to force any other aspect of maturing.

 

………………….

 

I went to class the day after Spike showed up. I remember thinking how strange it was that the day was so normal. I talked to friends. I paid attention to the lecture. I had a latte. I listened to music while I was stuck in traffic on the way home. I wasn’t all twisted inside and I wasn’t all giddy over the idea that I was going to see him again that night.

 

Actually, I was a little worried about myself for being so chill about it. Surely that couldn’t be right. Maybe I was in shock. Maybe I’d suddenly go into fits or throw a rage or burst into hysterical tears and they’d haul me off to the funny farm the way they did after the thwarted ritual.

 

The Council had me see a therapist after Wes’s death. That’s something you didn’t see on the television program. TV Buffy somehow managed to pick herself up, dust herself off and attack the next beastie with gusto no matter what had taken place in the previous episode, at least until Season 6 (more on that later). It didn’t work that way for me.

 

I’ve mentioned how a number of Slayers had committed suicide, had addiction issues or even became murderers. We aren’t gifted with advanced emotional resilience. We have the knowledge that the mission is primary, and that gives us a small advantage because we understand that the death and hurt aren't all in vain. But we never eliminate evil and the struggle feels pointless and senseless at times. We can fall back on the knowledge that there is a purpose but it’s not always enough.

 

I came to understand that Wes hadn’t died for me. It had to do with his own vow, and what he believed that meant. He didn’t tell the others to save Buffy at his expense. He told them to save the Slayer. I was expendable. My office wasn’t. A trained Slayer who’s made it to age 18 (Spike was right about that) was a huge asset to the mission. Wes had passed on to me much of what he had to offer. I was the one who could put that training to use. It was of little value to him other than to pass it on. I had it, the Slayer was the weapon now.

 

But I didn’t feel that way immediately following his death. I needed therapy (provided by the Council) to put it all into place. Part of the process was me being put into MY place. Wes hadn’t died for me. “Buffy” wasn’t so special. I didn’t need to take on a burden that wasn’t mine or give in to guilt soaked grief. Wes had people who would mourn him and recognize him as a hero, and countless millions who would never know what he did but would live and thrive because of it.

 

This time the Council was willing to do what Spike did, give me a minute to collect myself. Giles wasn’t as comfortable doing that though he needed to as much as I did, maybe more. He watched a Watcher disappear. He himself might one day suffer the same fate, that’s not an easy thing to dismiss, and we still weren’t certain where Wes had gone.

 

16 months after the incident, the Council, after having done exhaustive research, informed us that Wes had simply died. He had gone the same way my leg had, the force of crushing walls of rock. My leg hadn’t suffered a mystical injury (too bad because those are easier to fix) and Wes hadn’t been sucked into a hell dimension. He’d been crushed to death.

 

We had to give up hope of his return, but we could also stop having nightmares that he was suffering somewhere in another dimension, beyond our reach. Giles was visibly put at east when the final report came out.

 

You know who else deserved therapy and never got it? My mother. It was a wonder she didn’t go completely nuts over the course of time. Sometimes I wondered if the Council had found a way to drug her coffee because she kept chugging along no matter what kind of crazy took place.

 

Now, and this IS important, the Council did pay all my medical bills and covered any damages to our property. On TV that stuff sort of magically gets taken care of, and though the reality wasn’t as quick and easy as that, the bills were handled by the Council. Not that that alone should have kept my mother quiet and happy, but it went a long way towards good will.

 

When a Slayer gets chosen, her family gets chosen as well. They didn’t ask for it, but they have to live with an emotionally unstable, bizarrely strong girl. They have to worry constantly about her being maimed, killed or sucked into Hell. They have to deal with the house being attacked, the possibility that they will be hurt or killed. (not to mention the trauma of finding their daughter has taken up with a vampire) It would have been a kindness for them to drug my mother’s coffee.

 

You know what the Powers That Be SHOULD have done? (after all, the strategy worked for the Pony Express) They should choose only orphans as Slayers and lessen the damage to loved ones. There is no doubt that being the mother of the Slayer, aged my mom prematurely. On top of that, she chose to keep it to herself. My sister eventually found out, that was pretty much inevitable. The Council has a program for dealing with siblings, so why not for mothers?

 

Here’s an interesting factoid, that I think is all kinds of weird, most Slayers have absent fathers. The father died, disappeared, abandoned the family or was divorced from the mother. I never got an explanation that fully made sense, but it had something to do with bonding and different styles parents have for protecting their offspring.

 

Both fathers and mothers are protective, but one is a liability for the Slayer and the other is an asset. Having my dad around would have complicated things, having my mom around increased my odds of living to see another day.

 

And so, we are back to my mom. On the drive home from campus, I’d been worrying about how the evening was going to go. The night before things had been extremely tense between her and Spike. I was trying to think of a graceful way to diffuse the situation, so I could spend time with him without alienating her. I let myself into the house and found Spike and my mother playing backgammon in the living room.

 

For a hint of an instant, and I swear I did not imagine this, our living room was transformed into a Victorian parlor, both Spike and my mother were dressed in period clothing, then in a flicker, we were back in the present, in our living room but they were definitely still playing backgammon.

 

I didn’t even know we HAD a backgammon board. Where had she been hiding it? And how did we go from him refusing to enter the house without my explicit invite, to him being alone in the house with my mother?!! Why hadn’t she pulled the crossbow on this evil demon who’d had his evil way with her daughter? (see what I mean about the Council possibly drugging her coffee?)

 

They both looked up at me, and Spike immediately rose to his feet, not in an “Oh shit, Slayer’s here and I got me some explaining to do” manner, but in a gentlemanly manner of rising when a lady enters the room.

 

I hung up my coat and put my backpack on the floor, I looked at my mother and said the only thing that made sense, “Since when do you play backgammon?”

 

Spike had been around since forever, he probably knew how to play everything.

 

“Hi honey, did you have a good day?” my mother said in a carefree tone.

 

Spike was taking in the sight of me like a starved man.

 

“It was fine.” I think I motioned for him to sit down, at any rate, he did.

 

“Who’s winning?” I asked, this was totally surreal. I turned to Spike, “And what are you doing in the house?”

 

He looked sheepish.

 

“I told him to come in, it was silly having him wait outside.” Translation: “I wanted to talk to him alone, don’t question your mother.”

 

Point taken, but I was still curious, “Since when do you play backgammon?

 

The board they were playing on was one of those fold up ones. It was printed the back of a checkerboard, which explained why it was in the house. I never paid any attention because I didn’t know how to play, but the board had been around all the time. They were using dice with red and blue spots on them, borrowed from a board game. This was not the expensive, classic backgammon set they had been playing on in my vision..hallucination?

 

“Actually.” My mother gave me a smug look, “You are the reason I know how to play backgammon.”

 

My confusion was obvious.

 

The story: When I was born, there was some kind of mini hippie revival going on. Natural childbirth was a thing. Women were taking their rights back by not going through labor on their backs, feet in stirrups, with men looking at their private parts and checking their watches to see if they were going to make tee time at the golf course. Instead, women were staying on their feet, active, until the baby was about to come out. Then they gave birth in bathtubs or special chairs, or out in a rice paddy in solidarity with their third world sisters. My mom went into labor and went to the birthing center. She was walking around hoping to move things along when her labor stalled out.

 

The midwives gave her some herbal tea and encouragement and told her to keep moving. I guess things were going a whole lot of nowhere because she ended up going into the family lounge. That’s where birth non-attendees (you could bring family and friends in to watch you have a baby if you wanted) were hanging out. Somehow or other, she got to talking to an older man and he taught her how to play backgammon.

 

Does this make any sense to you? She’s in labor and sits down with someone’s grandfather to play a board game...

 

So where is my father in all this? Apparently as flummoxed (Spike’s word) as I was. My mom was feeling tense with him around and told him she didn’t want to see him. The midwives told him that was perfectly normal and that she would want him later so he made himself scarce, meanwhile, she gets chatted up by this older guy.

 

I guess it worked because a few games later, blissed out, my mom’s labor picked right back up, she decided she didn’t hate my dad after all and I was born.

 

The moral of the story is that when my mom is nervous, a few rounds of backgammon with a strange man will calm her right down.

 

“I haven’t played backgammon since. ” She ended her story.

 

This still didn’t explain how she and Spike even THOUGHT about backgammon let alone found the board and started playing.

 

He told me later that it had been his suggestion. He asked her if she had a backgammon board. He thought it was best if they had something to do to pass the time. I was so flabbergasted by the labor story that I hadn’t even asked how they started playing.

 

I asked again. “Who’s winning?”

 

“Spike mostly, but I got in a game or two.”

 

I wondered if he let her win.

 

By this time I was sitting next to Spike on the couch. I noticed my mother eyeing us together, the same way her eyes had fixated, the night before, at my hand on his arm. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to move away, or apologize or what.

 

Spike was rolling a chip across his knuckles, his fingers fluid as the chip went one direction and back again, smoothly, unhurriedly. If he was nervous, it didn’t show.

 

I wondered what they’d talked about and if it involved interrogation, threats or a warning, not that my mom is like that. She’s not overly interfering and she respected that I was approaching twenty. Still, this was a unique situation.

 

My mother and I had discussed the practical aspects of my housing situation. I couldn’t get a job, not with my Slayer responsibilities. It was possible I wasn’t going to live to see my 22nd birthday, no matter how much we hoped that wasn’t true. It made sense for me to continue to live at home. Besides, it was easier to protect her and my sister if something came up.

 

I could have pressed the Council for an apartment of my own, but I didn’t mind living at home. I loved my mom and enjoyed her company. I wanted to spend maximum time with her because there was the possibility that my days were numbered. I had come close to dying. It was real.

 

Then the broken leg happened, and I couldn’t have lived on my own for 6 months. The more we talked about it, the more sense it made to stay with her for the time being.

 

The subject of male friends came up. She wanted me to have a normal life and hadn’t given up hope that I would have some kind of relationship before the age of 22.

 

She also acknowledged that she’d like to date, so we made a pact. Before having a man stay over we would give the other the courtesy of introducing him. We would always let each other know if he was staying. We would never give a male friend a key, and never leave him alone in the house.

 

Those were our very reasonable, adult, ground rules. My mom had an occasional date. There were no over nighters that I was aware of, but she’d introduced me to two men. I’d only had Xander, who never spent the night, and now Spike. I was all kind of confused about Spike. Sure, he was in town but where was he staying?

 

I’d never used my “male friend” privileges. Suddenly, what seemed all grown up and reasonable when we discussed it, was in the weird zone. If Spike stayed (no reason to believe he’d even want to…yeah right) wasn’t that basically telling my mom I was two doors down banging some guy?

 

I noticed that Spike looked disheveled, not like the dapper gentleman in the vision I’d had moments earlier. “I think we still have a T-shirt and rain pants in the basement,” I told him.

 

“You going to make me shower in the hose with washing powder?”

 

My mom was looking between us, wearing the face I’d been wearing when I found them playing board games together.

 

“Do I want to know what you two are talking about?”

 

“Spike is the one who ended our tomcat problem.” I wanted to give credit where credit was due. I said it as if it should answer everything, and she didn’t ask how the two were related.

 

“Are you telling me I look a sight?” he surmised.

 

“Rumpled.” I looked him over. Our eyes were saying a lot more than our words were.

 

“I shouldn’t have come calling in such a state.”

 

“Rough night?”

 

“Something like that.”

 

My mom was watching, trying to figure us out. We were speaking as if we knew each other better than we did. As if we understood each other. Maybe we did understand each other more than made sense.

 

“Would you like to use the shower?” my mother asked him. She’s all about cutting to the chase, and I think she wanted to cement the idea that she was cool with all this. She wasn’t cool with it, but she wanted to be, for my sake, so I wouldn’t go into a tailspin again over what had happened. I think both Spike and I turned towards her in shock.

 

“You could clean up and we could have dinner.” Her voice was tense, in spite of a few rounds of backgammon.

 

“Do you have clothes?” I asked. If he was on the run he was probably packing light. This really was the most disheveled I’d ever seen him.

 

He shook his head and looked ashamed, which I had NEVER seen before, not even this tiny hint.

 

I still had my car keys in my hand. “We could go shopping, and pick up dinner.” I jangled my keys.

 

“Well, then that’s settled.” My mom stood up and smiled and gave me her “I need to speak to you a moment” look.

 

“Give us a minute,” I told Spike.

 

“I’ll go have a smoke.” He nodded and left the house.

 

My mother and I stood looking at each other for a minute without speaking.

 

“Backgammon?” I said.

 

“Why doesn’t he have clothes?”

 

“I have no idea. Why did you invite him in?”

 

“What would the neighbors think of a man hanging around on our porch?”

 

“Do you want Thai or Mediterranean food?”

 

“Mediterranean. Or should we let him decide?”

 

“No, he’s a gentleman, he’ll defer to whatever we want.” I honestly couldn’t tell you if I was kidding or not, I mean the guy eats people and bangs underage girls so maintaining that he’s a gentleman seemed a bit of a stretch.

 

“Defer?”

 

“Wasn’t that the right word?”

 

“Why was he killing Mrs. Abrosia’s cats?”

 

“I wasn’t fast enough to catch them.”

 

Both of us heaved a shoulder shrugging sigh and I took Spike shopping for clothes.

 

I hadn’t done much shopping with men, so it was sort of weird for me to watch him look through clothes. It felt private or something. Did he want me to comment? Did he want me to go away and come back later? What was the protocol?

 

I pretended to look through printed T’s while he shopped, but I was hyper-aware of him. I’m not used to seeing vampires at Target.

 

He showed up beside me, with a stack of clothes. “What do you think?”

 

“Um...”

 

“What do you like?”

 

“Me?” What was this, dress up the vampire?

 

He looked very amused at my naivety.

 

“I can’t see my reflection, Luv.”

 

“But this isn’t the first time you’ve ever bought clothes.”

 

“Thought I’d give you some say so, considering…”

 

“Considering?”

 

“Your hospitality, and after all, you will be looking at me.”

 

So this was dress up the vampire!

 

“Slayer, are you going to help me or not?” He called me Slayer, the word cut into me like a knife.

 

1000 images went whirring through my head, dusting his kind, training, Latin incantations, guts and gore, killing and violence…that wasn’t who I wanted to be in this moment.

 

“What look are you going for?”

 

“Devastatingly handsome.” He stepped towards me, way into my personal space. He was devastatingly handsome. OMG, I wanted him to kiss me.

 

We stared into each other’s eyes again. I was all dry mouthed, and I knew how things were going to go later tonight. Two years had just slipped away as if nothing had happened, as if we still had unfinished business, as if I was living on vampire time too.

 

I picked some clothes out of his pile. He went to try them on. I grabbed some shampoo and he grabbed shower gel because he didn’t want to smell of “cakes and roses” as he assumed my gel would. He grumbled that Target didn’t carry cigarettes and bought toothpaste and a tin of breath mints.

 

He asked if he could drive, said he missed it, so I let him. We picked up dinner and drove back to my house. It was too routine to feel strange. It was like being with Xander except with some mind blowing sexual attraction thrown in.

 

We had wine with dinner. Spike poured it with a kind of wacky grace. I mean, does that even make sense? It’s a bottle of wine, yet somehow he handled it in such a way that it looked like an art form.

 

I cleared up after dinner, he watched me but didn’t offer to help.

 

“Want to go for a walk?” he asked when I turned the dishwasher on.

 

“Sure, let me grab my stake so I can slay things.”

 

He stood looking at me in stunned silence. He wasn’t being patient with me. He was getting over himself. My words were a sharp reminder of our situation. He realized that I was still stinging from him calling me Slayer and that he needed to set things right.

 

He stepped into my space, close enough that our chests were touching. “I’m going to take a shower. I’ll be here when you’re done slaying things.”

 

Damn him.

 

He went upstairs to shower and I went and sat down in front of the TV with my mother.

 

“He’s staying over?” she said breezily.

 

“If you don’t mind.”

 

“He’s very polite.”

 

“When he wants to be,” I said it with a sniff. Not at her, I was in a snit with myself.

 

My mom muted the television. “You’re sure you’re ok with this?”

 

A thought rushed through my mind, I could let him have my room and sleep in my sister’s room. It didn’t have to be “like that.”

 

“He’s very polite,” I repeated her words, meaning, of course, that nothing would happen that I didn’t want to happen.

 

“When he wants to be,” she reminded me because, well, because it was true.

 

She turned the sound back on. We watched.

 

Spike called down from the top of the stairs “Buffy.”

 

That was it. I was undone.

 

……………………………….

 

I hadn’t lived with a man for four years, not since my parents split up. Walking up the steps to this yummy smelling, devastatingly handsome man of indeterminate age was intimidating but at the same time extremely exciting.

 

He had a towel around his neck and was wearing a white T and a pair of pajama pants. He looked like he was going to ask me a question but he didn’t.

 

I moved towards him like someone walking to the chopping block but happy to go. He held open my bedroom door, but it was up to me to pass through it. He wouldn’t follow me inside unless I asked him to.

 

“Come in Spike.”

 

He locked the door. It’s a vampire thing. I thought then, that it was some kind of power play, but it’s the result of having to protect himself from enemies and keep prey from running off. It’s a habit, nothing more.

 

He came to me, laid me back on the bed, and started kissing me. I felt hugely relieved. I was not in a state of mind to make small talk. Yet when he pulled back, out came words. “What is this?”

 

He grinned. “Me convincing you not to tell your Watcher and the Council that I’m in town.” He didn’t miss a beat.

 

He still had the towel around his neck and the tails of it were hanging down on either side of my face. I pulled it off and flung it aside. He was waiting...for his words to sink in, for me to react, then for me to get over my initial reaction.

 

“You know I won’t.”

 

“You telling me I don’t need to do this?” He lifted an eyebrow.

 

“Why are you here?” I meant in Collinsville, it was pretty clear why he was in my room.

 

He could have had any number of women by charm or by force. He hadn’t needed to come back, but he was here, in my bed, putting the moves on me.

 

Most women will never know what it’s like to be with a really strong man. Spike lifted me up like I was a toy, kissed me possessively then slid me to my feet making sure I rode the hard length of him on my way down. It was thrilling, and a bit menacing.

 

It was (and still is) unnerving when he manhandles me, there’s an intimidating vibe to it, an edge of threatening power. In no uncertain terms, he’s letting me know he can do what he wants with me. Of course, he couldn’t then because I was the Slayer and I could have knocked him into next Tuesday.

 

His one raised brow said it all: this is how it’s going to be. Are you on board or not?

 

I decided I didn’t want him in next Tuesday, I wanted him here. Now. I let him be strong, because it’s who he is, and I like who he is.

 

He accepted the tiny catch in my breath as my answer.

 

He stood up and removed his clothes, motioning for me to do the same. I reached for the light to turn it off and he stilled my hand. “No, I want to watch you.” I had about 5 seconds to get over that before he laid down on the bed and pulled me on top of him.

 

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I told him.

 

He just grinned. “I think that you do.” His confidence in me was admirable. I had relinquished power to him, and now he was handing it back to me.

 

I’d seen movies and read books, I knew that having the woman on top was supposed to be good for the woman because she’s in control and hot for the guy, because she’s in charge. There was Spike, all ready to go and I was supposed to hop on and do exactly what?…brain...brain help me out here.

 

I pictured how people do it in the movies. The woman straddles the man, she leans over him and makes a sultry face. Then she grabs hold of him, guides it in, then moves up and down, throwing her head back and making sexy noises. I think somewhere in there he’s supposed to knead my breasts, but hey, that’s on him. I’ve got plenty to do on my side.

 

I straddled him and he got a look on his face, pleased, but in a predatory way, like “Oh boy, this is going to be something!” He studied me, my hair, my expressions, my breasts, (I actually had some by then, my track and field days were behind me)

 

That doesn’t sound sexy, does it? None of this sounds sexy. I mean…I don’t know what I’m doing, and we don’t have any foreplay going on unless you count his stage directions, and now he’s just watching to see what I’ll do next.

 

A heated shudder went through me. There he was solid beneath me. His erection was right under me, poking out between my legs. His bare chest, and his eyes and his mouth were real this time. It wasn’t just me thinking about him. He was there. I could see him. I looked down and I could see us together.

 

He pulled me down to kiss him and I felt tears rising. A sob moved up my throat. This was it. We’d come full circle.

 

“It’s not as bad as all that, is it?” he asked. I knew some of my tears had fallen on his cheek.

 

I sat up and shook my head, and reached for tissues. He got to them first and held the box out to me. I blew my nose and he waited for me, the way he does.

 

“Oh, I must look good now,” I said through snuffles, knowing I must be red-eyed, damp and plain awful looking the way people are when they’ve been crying.

 

“You look very good.”

 

I blew my nose and tossed the tissue on the floor.

 

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I told him again, but I was already raising myself up, reaching for him. He helped me get lined up. We both trusted that I was wet enough to do this and I was, but I don’t know why or how considering our shocking lack of foreplay. I lowered myself onto him and he pushed up into me and I heard myself saying, “Oh my god, that’s amazing.”

 

“Yes, it is,” he hissed his agreement.

 

I realized my eyes were closed. I very much wanted to see the look on his face right then, so I opened them. I began to move, doing whatever felt best.

 

“And you told me you didn’t know what you were doing. If this is your ignorance I’ll be in high trouble once you figure things out,” he said. He was looking right into my eyes.

 

I knew how to get myself off, I’d be doing that for a few years. I knew that I should be able to get off doing this...if I could just figure out how. I began experimenting. I would try something and if I liked it I’d do it again, or if I saw he liked it, I’d do it again. Sometimes I aimed at something that seemed like it should feel good but it didn’t, so I’d try something else.

 

I knew he was watching me trying to figure things out. I considered feeling embarrassed but didn’t bother. He was having fun watching me, so it wasn’t doing any harm.

 

After a few minutes, he took hold of my hips, and said, “Work with me.” He lifted me up and moved us around, and even with me on top of him he easily sat up and kept us both moving without ever breaking eye contact. Then he looked down to where our bodies were together, and bang! He found a position where things were getting rubbed in all the right ways.

 

“Sorry, can’t wait,” he said and he came inside of me, but he held me up a little bit so he didn’t grind into me and hurt me the way he had last time.

 

After he was done he set me back down and gathered himself for a minute, then he took hold of me and began to move against me, watching my eyes.

 

“There?” he checked. “Like that?” I nodded, holy fuck. He found the way to hold me just right. “Are you close?” his voice was so sexy and breathy. “OK, Luv, finish it.”

 

He let me go, but it was ok now because I knew where I was going with this. There were times I’d worried what I would look like “in the moment”, and that I would be embarrassed to be seen, but I wasn’t. The light was on and I wanted him to see this, I wished I could see it myself.

 

“That’s it. God, you’re bloody beautiful…”

 

I didn’t want him to talk, I didn’t want any distractions, I just wanted to get off. I slowed down, moving against him, getting the pressure just right, and I knew it was going to work. I had been afraid that when I came he might move, and distract me or wreck it for me, but he stayed put, just where I wanted him until I was done.

 

“Yeah?” he checked.

 

I nodded. Apparently, sex with this guy was just always going to be mindblowing. Maybe that was his trademark.

 

I climbed off of him and we wiped up. I fell back happy on the bed. He turned off the light and pulled me up against him like this was an everyday thing…help someone achieve their first bone-shaking orgasm during sex then snuggle up and sleep.

 

He gnawed on my shoulder absentmindedly while he ran the flat of his hand over my nipple, tickling his palm with the hardened nub. He was feeling playful and content. The silent conversation taking place between his hand and my breast continued. He and I were mere bystanders as they whispered secrets.

 

Hormones Buffy, it’s those hormones painting everything with a bright broad brush. Even so, I wouldn’t have minded basking in that afterglow for the next two years, if that was how long it was before I had him again. I hadn’t waited for him, but if I had, this would have been worth the wait.

 

Spike lives on vampire time and does things the vampire way, what I don’t understand is how he can draw me into it when I am with him. This felt like the perfectly reasonable follow-up to our last time together. The number of days in between was immaterial. It was as if “we” existed beyond the dictates of time. That was where mere mortals dwelt.

 

Spike has told me that when he was a new vampire, he did everything to excess. More, different, new was HIS mantra, and he grew bored easily. He vacillated between worrying someone would stake him before he’d done it all, and worrying that he might last long enough to have done it all and be damned to eternal boredom.

 

Instead, after his manic several decade affair with gluttony, and the predictable hangover, he woke to a world rich with endless shades of color and texture. Music became more than the harsh shriek of violins and the thunder of timpani, every instrument now had its own sweet nuance. Women were now more than an escape from his throbbing violent need, they were a feast for the senses to be slowly savored, and he had time, the gift of time to enjoy it all.

 

That night, in his arms, twitching from the jolts of pleasure as his palm wandered over my breast, I forced away all worries that I was just another mindless lay and that he would be bored by morning. I pressed back against him as if by staying very close I could remain in his aura of vampire time, where everything was color and texture and where the only moment that mattered was now.

 

***********************************

 

Q&A

 

What's your favorite food?

You’ll hear about this in the story, but I don’t consider it a spoiler, enchiladas verdes! I swear, I could live off of them.

 

Hated food?

Anything in the cabbage family. Broccoli, cauliflower, Brussel's sprouts, blech. I can’t stand the smell of them either.

 

Who's the worst Big Bad you had ever faced?(If it's gonna be a spoiler and you'd rather not answer it, then at least give me a little detail on why you think he or she or it was the worst you've fought.)

The next several chapters of this book are devoted to the worst Big Bad, so you’re going to hear plenty about it. The reasons it was the worst are really complex and that will all come out in the upcoming chapters, so sorry, you’ll have to wait a little bit.

 

The thing about Big Bads, or all of life actually, is that when you face it, you’re not only facing IT, you’re facing all this stuff inside of you, and sometimes that’s scarier and more difficult than the thing outside of you.

 

This is probably going to sound super cliche’, but life, which isn’t bad at all, can be scarier and more difficult to face that something that is actually bad. You see a bad thing, and you know the thing to do is to fight it, overpower it. But with life...it’s not something to be conquered. It’s something to be lived and worked with.

 

 

What's the silliest enemy (or demon) you've ever faced?

The things I (we) faced weren’t much like the demons you see on the TV show. Very few demons look like men in costumes or had complicated wacky agendas like using virgin teen boys to fertilize their eggs. If that bug lady was real she would have wanted SLAYER blood to fertilize her eggs!

I can’t really think of any that were silly.

Probably the funniest “enemy” was this informant we sometimes worked with who was literally incapable of telling the truth. Talking to him was like being in a Monty Python comedy sketch. If you thought about anything he said, none of it made sense, but it you just kept asking him questions for a while, and sort of absorbed the information...you eventually got an idea of what was going on.

But after you spoke to him, if someone asked what he’d said or why you came to the conclusion you did...there would be no way of explaining it. Sometimes I couldn’t believe we were letting the fate of humanity (I exaggerate), hang on the gibberings of a compulsive liar, but you learn to work with what you got.

 

 

What's Spike biggest fear?

Here is what Spike has told me. When he first became a vampire, he was all heady with power and like a kid let loose. He wanted to do it all, feel it all.

In his crazy early days, he feared getting staked in the midst of his excesses. He feared pissing off his dean (the man who turned him). He feared getting taken out before he’d tasted all the pleasures that his powers allowed him to take advantage of.

He outgrew that. During war, he was afraid for the human race, which he considers himself a part of. He was afraid that he would never wake up from the nightmare of war, or that he would be a coward and would walk away, leaving the horror of war for others to sort out because he found himself unwilling to do what must be done.

He said that dying in battle wasn’t as scary, to him or many soldiers, as having to continue to live the horror of pain, suffering, misery, cruelty and darkness of soul.

He’s met many cowards in his life (he never uses the term unlife, he thinks it’s ridiculous) but many of them have persevered in spite of it. They have gone to battle, tears streaming down their faces, pissing themselves but they faced up to what they were and pushed past. He respects that.

But he doesn’t respect being so cowardly as to turn tail and run from one’s own perceived inner lack. There is a distinct difference between saying “this fight isn’t worth the sacrifice” and walking away, and saying “I’m a miserable coward, but I’m choosing my miserable self over something worth ever so much more.”

His greatest fear is that someday he will find out he is that coward he despises.

 

I have always loved the show ..but I was really disturbed by season 6! How did you feel about? And how did spike take that season?

The things that were presented in S6 were a mish-mash of a lot of different things in my life. Some of them literal and some of them symbolic. It was not the factual telling of a particular period in my life.

Some of the things definitely touch a nerve because they are things I went through.

A lot of S6 I hate because I don’t want people to think that is how my life was or how people I love behaved.

The way my relationship with Spike was portrayed has always been an issue and it’s one of the reasons I wrote this book. Our story deserves to be told. It wasn’t always pretty, but it was NEVER like S6.

But yeah, I had lots serious issues to deal with after a particularly painful battle. I made some really stupid decisions while I was trying to deal with life. I turned away people who tried to help me. I’ve experienced depression and aimlessness. I pretty much spill my guts about all that in this book.

You will also see some of the supernatural things that happened in S6 show up here. Mostly in scattered bits here and there because that is how the TV writers chose to use them.

Season 6 reminds me of some of the most painful periods of my life, but it’s also frustrating to watch because things don’t get resolved in any realistic way.

Spike, interestingly, and maybe predictably, dislikes the way I was portrayed. He is much less bothered by the way they had “him” act, even the attempted rape than he is by the way they had Buffy behave.

Over the course of his existence, there isn’t anything the writers could come up with that Spike hasn’t done or isn’t capable of doing, but that’s not true about me, and it angers him that people might think I was like TV Buffy.

He says they got my personality right, but my actions all wrong. He’s known me sad, distracted, depressed, self-loathing, and overwhelmed but he’s never seen me act out in the degrading ways S6 Buffy did.

 

Are crosses more lethal than on the show?

There is a ton of supernatural mojo that I will attempt to explain in the next several chapters. Some of that will address why certain things have power in the supernatural sense. The crucifix Spike brought me will be playing a major role.

But I can give you a quick and dirty here. Religious symbols that have been consistently accepted as representing good, holy, or clean things have power over evil, defiled and dirty things. That works in the opposite direction as well. Recognized symbols of evil and hatred offend and repel good.

It’s also true that there are “language” barriers. An insult, compliment or symbol in one culture, might mean quite the opposite in another culture.

The cross and even more so the crucifix (having the image of Christ on it) is recognized by the majority of people in the Western culture as a symbol for good and holy. Agents of evil find it offensive. 

A blessed cross or crucifix, especially a wooden one (which in the right hands could be used as a stake) has the power to burn vampires. It won’t dust them, and unless it’s shoved through their heart, it won’t kill them. Still, vamps get twitchy about stuff like that. Burns are one of the most painful injuries after all.

Unblessed crosses and crucifixes repel many vamps because they can’t tell, without touching them, whether or not they’ve been blessed. An unblessed cross/crucifix won’t actually burn a vampire. Yes, blessing DOES make a difference. But it does symbolize that the wearer or bearer recognizes the power of good and takes advantage of it. They are likely to have other tricks up their sleeve beyond just a cross.

The crucifix Spike brought me was not only blessed, it had splinters of the actual cross of Christ in it. It also had the power of millions of prayers attached to it. We will never know the extent of damage it could have done to Spike had he touched it, but it definitely would have given him serious burns and it’s likely that it could have killed him.

More on this later.


	11. The One Where We Have Breakfast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look at some family dynamics

The One Where We Have Breakfast

 

Maybe you’re wondering (people have asked me before) why my mother was fine with me waltzing upstairs to have sex with a vampire. Why she was OK with said vampire sleeping in her house and why she didn’t immediately report the vampire in question to Giles?

 

Collinsville wasn’t like Sunnydale, the mythical vampire town. My mom knew about Angel, not all the grim details, but that he was a vampire and that he worked with my Watchers to further the cause and keep me safe.

 

She trusted that I knew the difference between a vampire who snatches girls outside the bowling alley and the other kind. Even if she didn’t know what made them “other”, she trusted I knew what I was doing. After all, I had been trained by the best.

 

Just because she dealt with the fact that Spike was a vampire, that didn’t mean she was comfortable with everything about him. She didn’t trust him. They didn’t meet for cocoa and cozy talks like you see on TV. Backgammon that night, was sort of a truce until they figured each other out, but between you, me and the pocket watch (one of those things Spike says that is too cute not to use when I get the chance) their relationship wasn’t much more than a truce for a long time.

 

They did continue playing backgammon. In fact, not long after that night, Spike brought my mother a very nice backgammon set. It was their thing, something they could do that was pleasant and non-threatening. (plus it’s a good way to size up your opponent) Over time they got to know one another better, but in the beginning, it definitely wasn’t a case of two pals sharing a friendly game and shooting the breeze.

 

My mother didn’t think it was all that strange for me to be involved with Spike, once she met him. He is so handsome and disarming, no wonder her daughter went all round-heeled over him. She never imagined it was a love match. He was so completely different from Xander that she assumed he was the rebound guy following that failed relationship.

 

My life was so chaotic and out of the ordinary that sleeping with a vampire wasn’t that big a deal and no doubt he was going to breeze on out of Collinsville and I’d get on with my life again. I was nearly 20, having consensual sex with a hottie wasn’t going to emotionally wreck me for life.

 

Mom is very straightforward, and the older I got the more we were like friends. She didn’t try to act young and palsy-walsy with me but we could talk about almost anything. I’m not sure that would have happened if I hadn’t had the episode with Spike that rattled me up so much when I was 17. That got us talking and once we broke through the barrier we did more and more of it.

 

I had built up a lot of walls after finding out I was the Slayer. I believed I needed to protect my mother not only from the “bad guys” but from knowledge of the supernatural, and the level of danger I was in. I felt guilty for having pulled her into the perils of Slayerage and felt I had no right to ask or need anything else from her.

 

Had I not been blindsided by a situation so fundamentally human, and so fundamentally related to being a woman, I would likely have toughed out my formative years under the delusion that I didn’t deserve or need something as indispensable as a mother.

 

That’s how ignorant and arrogant I was. I thought I knew enough and had my shit together enough that I needed to and had the ability to protect her. Had Spike raped me and left me for dead, it would have been worth it if it had compelled me to reach out to her. That is how profound an influence my mother has been on nearly every aspect of my life.

 

There were a few subjects we didn’t get into by mutual agreement, but the nuts and bolts of life were all on the table.

 

It was our responsibility to protect my sister. When she was home the entire dynamic changed. Understandably, she wanted both of our attentions and we felt we owed it to her. Having her home, younged down the house. That’s like “dumbed down”, except my sister wasn’t dumb, she was just young.

 

Technically, Dawn was supposed to spend weekends with my mother and me, but in reality, it never worked out that way. She lived on campus at her school in LA, and spent most weekends at our father’s place, also in LA. She so often had weekend rehearsals or performances that she sometimes didn’t come to Collinsville for 6 weeks at a time.

 

We couldn’t talk about me being the Slayer with her, we weren’t as frank with each other about many things when Dawn was home. It was a little bit like we didn’t know how to act. There were so many things we couldn’t explain to her, and it’s always awkward when you’re keeping secrets.

 

At that time she danced and sang and dreamed of performing in Broadway musicals. She was worldly for her age. She performed regularly and traveled often. But worldly and mature are two different things. Dawn didn’t think so. She thought she was extremely mature just because she had been many places and seen many things. She thought she did a better job of behaving like a grown up than she actually did.

 

She did well in school and had tons of poise. Even so, she also had a lot of worries about her looks and talents, I guess that is what goes with HER calling. The fact that she is beautiful isn’t enough. She has to be the right KIND of beautiful to get the roles she wants.She is very pretty and stately, like my father and grandfather. Mom and I are shorter and rounder.

 

Even though Dawn and I spent little time together there was some pretty serious sibling rivalry going on. I hated that when she came home, my identity morphed into “average student who had been on the track team but never excelled, had been suspended twice, expelled once, didn’t have a boyfriend and had no idea what she wanted to do with her life.” That is hard to swallow when the reality is you have super powers and are constantly risking your life to save humanity.

 

Even though I loved Dawn, I was glad she wasn’t around regularly during my Slayer years. I worried about protecting her, both physically and emotionally. I had a tendency to wish her gone and then feel guilty about it.

 

Plus, when she was home she had our mother’s full attention and if things happened that I needed to talk to Mom about, I was out of luck. I tried to be patient with Dawn, but I’m not a good actress, and things could get pretty tense between us, but we had great times together as well.

 

The times when we weren’t distracted by the drama going on in either of our lives, we had fun doing sister things, talking, shopping, hanging out and gossiping. We had great times with my mom too, when all three of us cut loose and had fun. I’d realize my face hurt from smiling so much and that all the smiles had been authentic.

 

My sister and I didn’t share much then. Even when we were having good times together, we didn’t often talk about personal things. I regret that now because it’s hard to manufacture closeness later on, especially when you weren’t there for each other during some very important times in your life.

 

There are holes in our relationship that I don’t think we will ever be able to fill. There are so many things that are too painful to explain that wouldn’t have needed explaining had we shared them at the time.

 

Even though Dawn wasn’t home most of the time she had her own fully furnished room, and it seemed like more than her fair share of things, considering she also had a full compliment of belongings at school AND at my dad’s.

 

She basically had three wardrobes, three sets of towels and sheets, makeup and music collections. They didn’t want her to have to pack up to go from parent to parent and parent to school. That would give the psychological impression, that she was an orphan being toted from place to place with no place to call home.(a psychologist my mom saw around the time of the divorce suggested this) so Dawn had everything she needed at each location where she lived.

 

You can imagine how well that went over with me, given the shit I was dealing with at the time. My wardrobe was mostly utilitarian and way too close to being disposable and she had so many pretty things. Every time I saw her she had new clothes or shoes or earrings. It’s not that I didn’t have any nice clothes, I just didn’t have a lot of opportunities to wear them.

 

To be fair, Dawn made an effort not to flaunt her abundance. I mean she didn’t gloat or anything, but in a way that was worse. She tried to act like those things were no big deal so it wouldn’t hurt my feelings. She was more than 3 years younger but felt she had to take it easy on me.

 

My sister got bored quickly in Collinsville. There wasn’t much to do and she had no friends there. Her life was in LA. Still, she really did like to come and see me and Mom. She missed us a lot and wished we lived back in LA. Visits, especially the goodbyes, were hard on her as well. It was not a great family situation, but just like she needed to be in LA for school, I needed to be in Collinsville. At the end of the day, I felt like I was the winner because I had Mom.

 

I felt kind of guilty for that too, guilty enough that I tried to give them time together when Dawn was visiting, and I really tried to not make my problems their problems when we were all together.

 

For a few years, Dawn considered me the problem child...a classic case of a kid gone bad after the parent’s divorce. She felt sorry for me which drove me buggy. She came out of the divorce with a scholarship to a school for the arts and three wardrobes, I came out of it maladjusted with a spotty school record and an endless stream of suspicious injuries.

 

Trying to explain how I broke my leg was a treat. It was one thing to say it was a car accident, but another when she came home and saw the x-rays. No car accident on the planet could have crushed bones that way.

 

Dawn didn’t know how to treat me when I had the cast on. She wanted to help but wasn’t sure how. Any attempt to baby me had me gritting my teeth.

 

I also think it wigged her because she worried that something like that could happen to her and end her career. It’s especially unsettling when a friend or sibling has a tragedy, you can’t help but worry that you might be next. Bad luck feels contagious.

 

I understood her apprehension. Not knowing how long my injury would take to heal, and whether it would heal entirely were huge worries to me, even though we were pretty sure that Slayer healing would make it ok.

 

The Council hired orthopedic specialists who understood the “unique circumstances” to oversee my case. There are more people than you might think who are clued into the world of the supernatural. The Council kept them on file and called them in when needed. Specialists or no, between the pain and the stir crazy, I wasn’t always a cheerful patient.

 

Dawn tried to be a good sister, but sometimes everything she did seemed to rub me the wrong way. I had a broken leg. That didn’t mean I had nothing better to do than listen to her tell stories about dance class for 3 hours straight. The last thing you want to hear when you can’t walk is how agile someone else is. One thing she did that was really nice, is she would wash my hair.

 

Part of the Slayer medical package included high tech fiberglass mesh cast, that I could shower or bathe in. But I didn’t get fitted with one until a few weeks after my third surgery. I had a period of several weeks when I needed help with things as mundane and tedious as washing my hair.

 

Dawn was really good at it. My mother didn’t have much patience for it. She tried to get Xander to do it…no, just NO. Wendy would do it, but she was all thumbs. I guess it is harder to wash another person’s hair than you’d think, and Wendy was pretty awkward. Dawn was a natural. They did each other’s hair and makeup at her school all the time.

 

During one of our beauty sessions, she asked me to level with her. “Ok, really Buffy. I know you didn’t break your leg skiing, because...you don’t ski. It’s wasn’t a car crash. The car doesn’t have a scratch on it. So what really happened?”

 

“It was just a really bad acciden.”

 

“An accident doing what? There aren’t many things that can happen to a person that will literally crush bone.”

 

I started wracking my brain. I was going to say “You know that fissure out behind the high school?” then realized I couldn’t because she DIDN’T know it. She didn’t know anything in Collinsville, which is why it seemed like it should easy for me to make something up.

 

The accident was hard to talk about. We were still dealing with the horrific loss of Wes. I didn’t think I could talk about what happened without crying, but I didn’t want to have to make up any more lies.

 

Mom and I had discussed whether or not to tell Dawn and my father about my Slayer calling and decided not to. Now here I was, my hair all soapy and my sister telling me it’s time to come clean about what really happened.

 

“A boulder sort of fell on me.”

 

“A boulder? Out here?”

 

“There’s this place…a lot of rocks are exposed and sometimes there are tremors…and the rocks fall. Some fell on me.” That was pretty near the truth.

 

“Why were you out there?” A perfectly reasonable question, seeing as I’d never cultivated rock climbing as a hobby.

 

“Just, you know…hanging out with friends.” I began to sniffle.

 

Most people would have been tactful and stopped asking questions at that point, but most people aren’t nosy 15 yr old sisters who are hell bent on bonding with big sis and who want a good story to bring back to tell her friends at school.

 

“Were you like doing drugs or something? Like you got high and were hopping around on the rocks?”

 

I guess that was a reasonable explanation. My reputation with my sister was already pretty lame but I didn’t want her to think that I was such a low life that, at 18, I was hanging out getting wasted and taking reckless dares with my loser buddies.

 

“No, I don’t do drugs. I’ve never done drugs and you’d better not either.”

 

“OK, ok…no drugs.” She waited for me to go on.

 

“I was down there with some of my teachers, and a couple other students. We were doing research, then there were tremors and I got hurt and one of my teachers…” I started wailing.

 

“Mom! Mom!” my sister called. “Something is wrong with Buffy.”

 

I was bawling my eyes out. My mom came in. Dawn sort of explained what happened, my mom sent her out of the room and finished rinsing my hair. She said it was time we gave my sister a plausible explanation.

 

“Giles could talk to her. They have some kind of story they tell families.” I reminded her.

 

“Is it the truth?”

 

“Some version of it. I think.”

 

Mom stood there considering. “Will it sound like bull shit?”

 

“Probably less than the actual truth does.”

 

“Dawn, come in here,” my mom said.

 

She told Dawn pretty much what I had. We’d been doing research and the tremors led to a terrible accident and it was too soon for me to talk about it without breaking up.

 

“But Buffy, what kind of research?” Considering my grades and interests, it was a fair question to ask.

 

“Call Giles,” I told my mom. Giles had a script, I didn’t.

 

“So who is this Giles guy?” Dawn asked me that night after I was tucked into the couch.

 

“He’s like a teacher, and kind of my boss. Do you know what work study is?”

 

“He knows mom, are they dating or something?”

 

Dawn was always fishing for information on our mom’s social life. I think she just really curious, she wasn’t collecting intel for my dad.

 

“No, they don’t date. He was my track coach,” I said as if that shed some light on things.

 

“You kind of get hurt a lot don’t you.” Dawn noticed. She was right. I always had some kind of cut, bruise, sprain, mark or stitches when she came to visit. “And those aren’t track injuries.”

 

“No, you’re right.”

 

“Does this guy beat you? I have this friend and her mom’s boyfriend--”

 

“No, no one is beating me.” By the time I got to the end of that sentence I looked and sounded like I was lying...because I was. I got beaten pretty regularly. My injuries were consistent with fighting and Dawn wasn’t stupid.

 

“Ok, I do fight a lot, you know, martial arts.”

 

“You don’t look like that from Karate or Tai Kwon Do, people don’t get torn up like that.”

 

Was this the time to spring it all on her…tell her there were vampires and demons and that the things that go bump in the night also tried to tear her sister limb from limb, and opened up a fissure in the earth that tried to swallow her?

 

“Giles will explain it tomorrow.”

 

“You don’t think that’s weird, that you can’t tell me what happened but your old track coach can come over and give me magic answers that will clear it all up?”

 

I wondered if Wendy could put some kind of spell on Dawn to make her not ask these questions and to accept any story we fed her.

 

“I don’t know how to explain it to you,” I admitted. “I fight a lot. Sometimes things go wrong and I get hurt.”

 

“Your bones get crushed.”

 

I broke into tears again, the word crushed still does that to me. I can’t explain to you the pain, there just aren’t words. I may have escaped getting dragged into Hell, but my leg knows what Hell feels like.

 

“Ok, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry Buffy, I won’t ask any more about it, not till Mr. Giles comes.”

 

I half expected Giles to show up with one of those flashy thingies the guys in Men in Black have to make people forget what they saw. I was looking forward to seeing how it worked.

 

He didn’t have that. He brought a few of his weird old books and some newspaper clippings of strange happenings in Collinsville and he told her a generic version of the truth. He said I was exceedingly strong and was working in tandem with a group based in England fighting a bad element that had a stronghold in Collinsville. (that bastion of organized crime...sheesh) It was considered top secret work and was quite dangerous and took a lot of time and commitment and I had saved countless lives.

 

Dawn turned pages of one of the musty old volumes. “Vampires?” She looked at us like “gimme a break, guys”.

 

“I don’t expect you to understand all of it,” Giles said in his diplomatic way.

 

My mom took over. “Dawn, everything he said is true. He can’t tell you anymore because it would put your sister in greater danger. We are trusting you to not to talk about this because things are pretty bad as it is.” She motioned to my leg. Mom explained that when I turned 22 I would be done with my tour of duty, but until then some strange things were going to be happening and it was best if Dawn didn’t press for details. My mother is not so much with the dithering.

 

Hearing it from our mom, Dawn accepted it.

 

“Someone died?” Dawn looked from my mom to me.

 

“I’m afraid so, and your sister very nearly did die,” Giles said.

 

Dawn paled and swallowed hard. There’s no easy way to wrap your head around your loser sister actually being some kind of special ops undercover agent, but she did a pretty good job of it. After that when we’d talk, she’d try to be conversational and ask if I’d beat anyone up or run into any vampires lately. The way she said it made my calling sound trite, but she meant well. She was gentler with me after that, occasionally patronizing, but she really did care. Dawn didn’t want me to die.

 

She was sorry when Xander stopped hanging around. She had been referring to him as my boyfriend and neither my mom or I corrected her. Dawn had met him a few times and she really liked him. She asked if he knew about that guy dying and I told her that Xander had been there when it happened and that he had been one of the people who saved me. She asked if the entire town of Collinsville had these weird things going on with monsters underground tunnels and bad guys.

 

Well, yeah, it sort of did. No longer did she assume small town life was safer (or duller) than LA.

 

……………………………………...

 

People say that one of the nicest things in life is waking up beside the person you love. It was unclear if Spike fell into that category. Did I LOVE Spike? Maybe, but I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time.

 

I hardly knew him. I didn’t exactly know why he was back in town but I doubted bringing me the crucifix was the primary reason. I couldn’t fully conceive that he would have traveled any distance just to see me. Giles didn’t know Spike was in Collinsville so he probably wasn’t on Tribunal business.

 

I didn’t think we were going to look into each other’s eyes at dawn’s early light, say “hey”, and grin like school kids at each other. I didn’t know what to say to him. Maybe we were just having another one night stand, except this time with my mother as witness.

 

The Sun was just coming up and I was laying on my back, musing. I had my hand held out in front of me and I was looking at my fingers, moving them around and thinking about this whole thing with Spike. Then I noticed he was watching my hand and fingers too. We were lying side by side, our minds aimlessly wandering...

 

He raised his hand and caught mine. He brought my fingers to his mouth and nibbled on the tips of them. I totally felt like I could roll over, look into his eyes, say “hey” and be totally enamored with waking up beside this guy.

 

So I tried it. I couldn’t say “hey” once I looked into those eyes. He was too…not serious exactly, and “old” isn’t the right term either, but those were both in there. His eyes were deep, and had so much going on in them that they were a magnitude above anything as mundane as “hey”.

 

He continued nibbling on my fingertips and occasionally my knuckles. So I took his hand and brought it to my mouth and nibbled one of his fingertips, which delighted him no end. He slipped his finger into my mouth and gave me a very naughty look, and when I blushed he took his finger back and kissed me in a very sexy way. He met my eyes and said, “So THIS is the Slayer in the morning…”

 

“No. Not the Slayer. Buffy.” I corrected him. For some reason that mattered to me very much. That he was there with ME, not the Slayer, not some role that I played.

 

“Buffy,” He corrected and dipped his head in apology. He slipped his fingertip back in my mouth and watched me to see what I’d do.

 

“So this is Spike in the morning,” I said, pulling his finger out.

 

He studied me with those ageless eyes and looked like he wanted to speak but didn’t.

 

“What?”

 

“Guess I am Spike.” He seemed puzzled by that.

 

“Who else would you be?”

 

“Been so many things over the years…”

 

“So who’s with me now?” This was getting interesting.

 

“Who do you want?”

 

“No fair. When you woke up this morning and opened your eyes…who were you?” I sometimes felt like the Slayer when I woke up and sometimes felt like Buffy, so this wasn’t really a strange question to ask.

 

“I was the lucky bloke who woke up seeing you next to me and your pretty little hand reaching for the stars.”

 

It’s like he had the perfect answer for everything, and what’s more is I believed him. In that moment that’s who he was, just a guy happy to wake up in a pretty girl’s bed.

 

I felt this rush of happy inside me. I wanted to be in his arms and tell him all my secrets, but it seemed like he already knew them.

 

“So did you catch any?” he asked. He was guiding our hands back up towards the ceiling and there were our two hands together, fingers spread.

 

I really liked him. I really liked this. I liked that somehow I didn’t feel all weird and uncomfortable around him even when I expected to or thought I should.

 

“The Sun’s coming up.” I noticed.

 

“Oh, were you planning on kicking me out? You didn’t say.”

 

“No, I guess I just…you didn’t stay the other night.”

 

He pulled our hands down and wound his fingers through mine. “Didn’t want to get you in trouble with your mum.”

 

Of course whatever he said made perfect sense. He was always three steps ahead of me.

 

“Is it time to get up?”

 

“Soon,” I said.

 

“Mind if I sleep in? I’m a bit beat.”

 

“No, go ahead. I can...” I moved to sit up.

 

“Don’t rush off, I like you right where you are.” He held me fast.

 

I liked it right where I was as well.

 

I recalled something Wesley had explained about vampires. They move into an area and claim things. They see something they want, take it and fight off anyone who tries to take it from them. Things become theirs simply because they said so. I felt like Spike was doing that. He came in, took me, and told me to stay where I am because he wanted me there. It’s the vampire way of doing things.

 

I was the Slayer, I should have put him in his place, but dammit if I didn’t like him exactly where he was too.

 

“Don’t reckon I can smoke in here.”

 

“Go onto the roof.”

 

“You won’t run off?” He was sitting up and looking for his pants.

 

“Maybe to make coffee.”

 

“Have any tea?”

 

“We do, but Giles tells me I make it wrong.”

 

“I’m not a snob.”

 

I watched him pull his pajama pants on.

 

I halfway thought he liked the idea of my eyes on him, but at the same time, he was so at ease that I wondered if he noticed I was watching him at all.

 

He went through his jacket pockets, feeling around for his ciggies.(another term I picked up from him. He always calls them that, never fags or smokes)

 

“Tea it is.” I got up to find my clothes, he grinned as I stood up. He pulled me against him and wriggled so I could feel the erection which hadn’t been there a minute ago while he was dressing.

 

Want, take, have and fight off anyone who says otherwise.

 

He let me go and went to the window, the Sun was rising on the other side of the house. It wasn’t bright enough yet to harm him so he hopped out onto the roof and lit up.

 

I dressed and went to make coffee and tea.

 

My mom already the had coffee going. She looked me over from head to toe when I entered the kitchen. “You don’t look any the worse for wear,” she said.

 

See what I mean about my mom? No dithering.

 

“Where’s Spike?”

 

“He’s smoking on the roof.” It sounded fine in my head, but weird when I said it out loud.

 

She closed her eyes and took another drink of her coffee. I went to boil water for tea.

 

“So he stayed the night.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Well, I guess that’s something.”

 

“When he left before, he had to leave town. He didn’t skip out on me without saying goodbye.”

 

She eyed me over her coffee mug.

 

“I was stupid and young.”

 

“And he was neither.”

 

I nearly said, “What do you expect, he’s a vampire.” then realized that she didn’t need to hear it. Her expectations were already low. I needed to remind myself.

 

I also realized I sounded like I was trying to defend him, which implied I thought he did something that needed defending. I was acknowledging wrongdoing on his part.

 

I went rummaging for tea bags. I pulled out two mugs and only turned around when Spike entered the kitchen.

 

“Good morning Ms. Summers.”

 

“Joyce.” She waved away any formality.

 

She looked him up and down, but she made no comment on whether or not he was worse for wear.

 

“Sugar or lemon?” I asked

 

“Milk and sugar.”

 

“It’s skim.”

 

“I’ve had worse.”

 

I set the milk in front of him and pushed a mug and a tea bag towards him while I went for the kettle.

 

We all watched the steam rise as I poured the water.

 

“Well, isn’t this cozy,” my mother said.

 

“Bit awkward,” Spike allowed. “It’s been awhile since I’ve dealt with a bird’s mother.”

 

“First for me.” She raised her mug to his. “Buffy’s first sleep over.”

 

Spike smiled. Well, yeah, not exactly. He didn’t say a word.

 

I put some English muffins into the toaster. Not because Spike is British, just because we had them and I liked them.

 

“Do you two need to have it out or anything?” he checked.

 

“No, we have a gentleman’s agreement.” Mom told him. She held her mug out and I refilled it with coffee.

 

Spike pushed the milk towards her and she smiled.

 

We were cozy in our little way.

 

“Dawn is coming home this weekend.” My mother said.

 

Spike looked to me.

 

“My sister,” I explained.

 

“Oh, right, the other room. Where is she then? School?”

 

“Yeah. LA.”

 

“She know Angel?” he asked.

 

My mother looked at him surprised. “Do YOU know Angel?”

 

“Oh Please…”

 

“Not a fan,” she noticed.

 

“Don’t suppose he has a friend in this room.” Spike snorted.

 

Mom looked to me. She didn’t know there was any love lost between me and my former ally.

 

“He can be a jerk sometimes.” I told her.

 

“And why do I think there’s a story there?” she said, giving me a look.

 

“Old news.” I gave her a little smile.

 

“I probably don’t want to know. Am I right?”

 

I set to buttering the muffins.

 

“Marmalade?” Spike asked.

 

“Strawberry jam.”

 

He nodded and waited while I went to the fridge.

 

He spread jam on a muffin and took a bite, having determined it was acceptable, (he had taken great care to get the jam all the way to the edge) he offered it to me.

 

It was a strange little ritual, it’s a way he has. He has to establish that a thing is his. His muffin, then he gave it to me once he made sure it was right. It was, either way, chauvinistic or very chivalrous. I took the muffin. I know my mother was watching our exchange with great interest. Spike was letting everyone in the room know that I was his and that he would take care of me.

 

This was why she didn’t trust him, he had this way of getting people to come round to his way of thinking and doing. He moved into a space and made it his own. He was doing that with me, in front of my mother and daring us to object. He could express so much without saying a word.

 

He prepared a second muffin half, gave it to me, then took his tea and announced he was going back to bed.

 

“He’s something. I can see the fascination,” she said as we listened to him pad up the steps.

 

“The kind of guy you want to have on your side,” I remarked, thinking of the prosthetic leg... thinking of the crucifix.

 

“I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be on his bad side,” she acknowledged.

 

I felt like I should say something, but Spike pretty much spoke for himself.

 

I didn’t have class until afternoon. I didn’t know if it would wake Spike if I sat in my bed and read, so I decided to crack my books at the dining table.

 

Eventually, I had to get ready to go so I hit the shower and went to my room to dress. He was sitting up in bed reading a novel from one of my classes the previous semester.

 

“Wondered where you were,” he commented.

 

“Pesky thing called homework.”

 

“Didn’t have that when I was a boy. We had lessons with study time built in.”

 

“You know, I don’t really mind it, it’s not like grade school and high school. I get myself a cup of coffee and have some me time.” As I said it, I realized how true it was. I didn’t love all my classes, but studying did give me a sense of purpose and unlike high school, college felt like an investment in myself. It wasn’t something I was forced to do.

 

“You’re going to class then?”

 

I wondered if he had expected me to stay with him, but it didn’t sound like that was where he was going with this. I nodded.

 

“Can I stay here? Will your mum mind?”

 

The gentleman’s agreement my mother had mentioned to him, stipulated that the male guest would only be in the house if we were with them, no leaving strange men unattended. This was my first sleepover and I was already being asked to bend the rules.

 

“Looks like a no then.” His brow furrowed. “You should have kicked me out of your bed.” Which I am sure he said just to get a reaction out of me.

 

“Probably,” I agreed.“My mother will be home before I will, she’ll freak if she finds you here.”

 

“I could make myself useful.”

 

“Dust and vacuum? Cook dinner?”

 

“I could.” He didn’t look very happy about it.

 

I needed to leave soon so I decided we’d have to talk about it while I dressed. He very much enjoyed watching me dress and declared it was just as much fun as watching a woman undress, though sadly the ending was something of a letdown.

 

I wasn’t going to ask him to hide in the basement though the idea ran through my mind for a hot minute. Geez, what was this? I wasn’t a kid and he wasn’t contraband…exactly. There were many things about my life I needed to keep secret for some very good reasons. I hadn’t decided yet if he was one of them.

 

“Maybe you could just stay in my room and read?”

 

“But I wouldn’t,” he said. “No one home, I’d do a bit of snooping.”

 

He has the strangest brand of honesty. He’ll just tell you the thing he plans to do, knowing you probably won’t like it, and dare you to put up a fight. He’s not about asking permission OR forgiveness. He’s apologized to me many times, but he’s never asked me to forgive him. Those are two very different things.

 

“So you’ve already gone through my stuff?” I motioned around my room.

 

“No, just woke up a bit ago and found this book. It’s nice to have a lay about in a comfortable bed. I’ve been on the road.”

 

“I really have to go.”

 

“When can I see you again?”

 

Apparently, he had come up with an idea of how and where he was going to go. He wasn’t going to be here when I came home.

 

“Well, I…are you going to be in town long?”

 

“Depends, but I can’t stay here.”

 

No, of course, he couldn’t…right? Hey, mom, I’m having this guy move in. But maybe a day or two? I had no idea how this was going to work.

 

“And your sis will be here. Can’t hang around.”

 

Yes, of course, my mother had brought that up for a reason. It wasn’t just a random factoid.

 

“You’re leaving tomorrow?” My voice sounded strangled.

 

He got up and came over to me. “Not town, Luv, just your bed.” His arms went around me, but it wasn’t a hug. Spike doesn’t do hugs. He was feeling me, he wanted me to feel him. Who knows, maybe he was marking me with his scent.

 

“I have to meet with Giles tonight,” I explained.

 

“I could pop in through the window…”

 

“You could. Is it OK for me to show him the crucifix?”

 

“Show, not give.”

 

“I shouldn’t tell him where I got it?”

 

“I’m not afraid of Giles.” Spike sounded as if I’d insulted him.

 

“No, I know that.” And I did. “Not sure if I’m ready to deal.”

 

“I think we have some catching up to do.” His tone was vaguely ominous.

 

That sounded right, but having no idea what our relationship was and what role Spike played, I didn’t know what “catching up” amounted to.

 

“Can I keep this?” He had let go of me by then and was holding up the novel.

 

“Yeah, sure.”

 

“Mind if I leave my extra clothes here?”

 

I know I smiled at that because it meant he WOULD be back.

 

“Not a problem.”

 

“You best get on.”

 

I didn’t want to go. I wondered if I should kiss him. Were we a kissing sort of couple? It didn’t feel automatic. Spike was going through his pile of clothes, picking things out. I guessed I was dismissed, so off I went leaving the crucifix on my bedside table.

 

I would show it to Giles eventually.

 

In class I found my mind wandering more than it usually did. It wasn’t fixating on any one thing Spike had said or done, it was drifting through my feelings and reactions to what he’d said and done. I felt safe with him and embarrassed at the same time but then in a moment, my embarrassment would evaporate and I’d feel whole, like I was exactly where I was meant to be, doing what I was meant to be doing.

 

It wasn’t uncommon for me to feel that way when I was fighting in Slayer mode. I wondered what about Spike made me feel that way. Maybe it was his attitude of acceptance. He had very few expectations for me, yet somehow he believed I was totally capable. It wasn’t like he had low expectations, it was more like he didn’t feel the need to have any.

 

A lot of people had expectations for me, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. They inspired me to work hard, fulfill my duty, get decent grades and all that good stuff. I had expectations for myself and, as long as they were reasonable, they were healthy. It freaked me a little the way Spike just KNEW that I was going to be enough before I knew it.

 

He was respectful, within limits. He’d ask if he could have the novel, and if he could keep his clothes at my place, in the next breath he admitted that he’d snoop through our things. He was unlike anyone I knew.

 

I decided to stay on campus and reread the notes for the class I’d daydreamed my way through. I cracked my textbooks again, rereading the pages I’d browsed that morning, looking back and forth between the pages and my class notes. Then I closed my book and pretended I could hear the professor’s voice. Comprehension knit together in my mind.

 

I’m sure you’re catching on to the fact that I am very much a process person. I need to break things down, look at all sides of them then put them back together. That’s the only way they make sense to me. Once I’ve done that they are part of me. I GET them. Tai Chi is good for me because it breaks down the moves. I absorb them and then BANG, they’re there when I need them.

 

Processing a thing now allows me to react quickly and decisively later. I hate not knowing how to react to something, I don’t always trust my instincts and improvising makes me nervous. Whether it’s school or slaying, I prefer to keep a well stocked mental tool box.

 

I still needed to chew through, all the things had happened with Spike in the past 36 hours. I wasn’t going to tell Giles he was back just yet. Not until my mind had accepted for itself that Spike was back and I had a grasp on what “back” meant.

 

********************************

Q&A

 

Question... If it's not giving too much away can you explain what is the Vampire Tribunal and what Spike does for them?

The history and function of the Tribunal are summarized in the Q&A following Chapter 8.

What does Spike do for the Tribunal? Ha! I’ve been asking him that for years, and I usually get that look from him, the one that translates to “stop being tedious”.

Honestly, I’m not sure if Spike works for the Tribunal or they work for him. I think it’s a case of Spike associating with the Tribunal when he needs their credentials as a cover for whatever he’s up to.

The Tribunal knows what Spike is capable of in all the best and worst ways, so they call him in whenever they need someone with his particular skill set. That could be anything from actual high-level negotiations, intelligence work, to smuggling goods and/or sentient beings. Sometimes he just represents the Tribunal at events where they feel they need to show a presence.

Spike won’t sign on for thug work. That doesn’t mean Spike won’t gleefully kick the crap out of someone in the line of duty, but he won’t take a job if that’s all it amounts to. They don’t bother asking him.

Spike doesn’t work for the Tribunal consistently. His association with it is...fluid and often tenuous. Things will come up as the story progresses.

 

How does Spike dress?

When Spike is “traveling light” he does dress quite a bit like TV Spike. Simple and efficient. Dark T’s, black jeans, jacket with lots of pockets.

He doesn’t wear heavy boots, they’re not comfortable or practical.

When he’s just hanging out...jeans or other comfortable trousers (his word), he prefers button up shirts to pullovers. He hates polos and turtlenecks. He looks drop dead gorgeous in henleys.

Spike doesn’t usually dress in all black unless it’s a necessity. He says he thinks that look is a bit much, and it draws attention.

He usually wears dark rich colors. Wine red, forest green, deep purple, navy blue, charcoal. He has a few of pastel colored button ups (that I bought him) that he looks very yummy in.

I’m not allowed to talk about the famous coat. Sorry.

 

How old was Spike when he was turned?

Once he told me he was 23, another time 24 and another time 26. Apparently, it was somewhere in there. He’s been around a long time, and he doesn’t remember everything that’s ever happened to him. You’d think that something like that he’d never forget but he says his age at the time doesn’t really matter and when I’ve been alive for nearly 200 years I can weigh in on which dates are eternally memorable.

Seeing as some people (I would say “men” but that would be sexist of me) don’t recall their wedding anniversaries, or what year they were married...I guess I can see his point.

Similarly, Spike doesn’t celebrate anniversaries. Other than birthdays, he says he sees no point in dwelling on the past rather than celebrating the present and looking ahead to the future.

Birthdays are the exception because they are celebrating being around now, not really getting weepy eyed over the memory of getting shoved screaming and bloody into the world.

He really likes birthdays and gets quite excited about choosing a perfect present and planning a celebration.


	12. The One Where I Attempt to Explain the Supernatural, and Dawn Asks Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy explains some supernatural workings as she heads into the greatest challenge of her Slayerhood.

The One Where I Attempt to Explain the Supernatural...and Dawn Asks Questions

 

 

The truth about vampires is they rank a lowly 3 (it’s actually 2.7 I rounded up) on a scale of evil 1-10. Yes, they kill people and suck blood, and that’s bad, but it’s basic predator stuff. Most vampires don’t get involved in anything that can be considered Big Evil.

 

It’s like people and politics, most people really don’t care, they just want to live their lives, maybe they get worked up a little once every few years for a big election, but the rest of the time they just want someone else to take care of things. That’s vampires. They want everyone to think they’re evil, but mostly they’re just hungry and want to eat people and stay out of trouble.

 

Vampires ARE easy to recruit and bad guys of every species and several dimensions take advantage of that fact. Vampires are considered expendable manpower. The Evil Element lures them onboard with promises of blood and protection, get them to do their dirty work and then throw them under the Slayer when they no longer need their services.

 

I killed lone vampires when I came across them. I took out whole nests when they were in town doing some bad guy’s bidding. That’s really the only time that Collinsville got over run with them. We didn’t have a huge vampire population unless someone came into town and started turning people to create worker bees.

 

Vampires were so consistently used this way that they were essentially an indicator species. As soon as I’d start seeing an increase in vamps and neck related deaths, it was time to hit the streets to find out what was really behind it.

 

If you were in a dark alley and a vampire found you, you were in trouble, but it was unlikely any of them were going to mastermind an overthrow or try to send you barreling into another dimension.

 

Big evil isn’t just a threat to good, it’s a threat to little evil too. Vampires liked things to bounce along comfortably. It was in their best interest not to make a bad name for themselves or draw too much attention. They could earn a lot of brownie points, and get rid of the bad element that was exploiting their kind, by joining the good guys occasionally. Sometimes the Vampire Tribunal was on our side.

 

The TV show was loosely based on fact, with lots of added drama and creative editing that made it exciting and fast paced. I didn’t have a neat and tidy monster of the week. I was more focused on fighting the evil behind the bad guys than the bad guys themselves. No one handed me a weekly script and I didn’t have a stunt double.

 

Information filtered down to me on a “needs to know” basis. That wasn’t just when I was 16 and naïve, it remained standard procedure. There was a great deal that even Giles was unaware of. Information was funneled to us as the Council saw fit. They didn’t want to bog us down with too much information or give us only enough of a story to send us off half cocked.

 

Wes was generally better informed than Giles. We didn’t know just how much better until we lost him. Giles was running to catch up and I want to be clear that it was not his fault. He wasn’t deficient or anything. He did the job they sent him to do and did it very well, but after Wes was taken, Giles had to step up, quickly.

 

Many things about the supernatural are hard to comprehend. I used to drive myself and my Watchers, crazy, demanding explanations. I thought they were keeping me in the dark because they thought I was stupid, but that wasn’t it. Most of the time they didn’t tell me because things didn’t make sense.

 

On TV, you can’t tell your viewers that something is none of their business or that they should take you at your word. You have to give them a story, preferably one that makes some kind of sense, so they can get invested. That was me when I was 15, 16, and 17. I was someone who needed a story that made sense so I could get invested in it.

 

It’s standard military procedure for the ground troops not to have all the information, it’s on the higher-ups to figure out what is going on and what must be done to address it. I wasn’t exactly ground troops, but I didn’t have upper-level clearance either.

 

The Office of the Slayer isn’t controlled by the Council, they don’t own her. Many years ago they took the Slayer under their wing, putting the power of all the Council’s knowledge and resources behind her. That came at a price, a compromise. The Slayer gained many advantages but gave up some of her independence in exchange.

 

The Office of the Slayer developed into an affiliate of the Council, she is a powerful supernatural weapon and they manage her to the degree that she allows. I retained the right of refusal. That’s important because if I really felt like I was being told to do something wacko, I could say no.

 

Several times I said, “no, pending further information”. After that, it was up to the Council to provide details to support their request so I could reevaluate. The Council had always been able to come up with a reasonable enough argument that in the end, I had never given them a flat out “no”.

 

The Council had a decent track record on judgment and tons more experience. The longer I served as Slayer the more I trusted them, and the more they trusted me. They didn’t simply hand down orders, they listened to my and Giles’s assessment of what was going on.

 

There were no formal means by which to punish a wayward Slayer, and as long as I was reasonably fulfilling my duties, they worked with me. Looking back, and knowing what I know now, I believe there were times when they let an uncooperative Slayer cook her own goose because she wasn’t getting the job done and they needed another Slayer to be called.

 

I can’t answer for them, and I don’t know if it was right or wrong. If a Slayer won’t work with the Council, then how does the Council work with the Slayer? If you suck at your job and won’t learn from the people who can help you, shit happens. That’s why there are all those volumes of Watcher’s Diaries, cautionary tales of the Slayers that didn’t.

 

I think that’s why Spike said if I made it to 18, I was home free. Making it that far confirmed that I had the maturity to understand what my job was (and what it wasn’t), the skills to kick evil’s sorry ass and the good judgment to accept help when I needed it. The Slayer isn’t a vigilante.

 

Many of the things we refer to as “supernatural” are baffling. This is usually the result of things being lost in translation over dimensional boundaries. Not all worlds, universes and realities have parallels with our own.

 

Take water, for example. On earth, it’s everywhere and all life depends on it. It has particular properties and nearly endless uses. There is a word for water in every language on earth. But if you cross into a dimension where nothing remotely like water exists, all the things water does, they don’t have.

 

There are dimensions that we can’t begin to conceive because they are so fundamentally different from our own that there is nothing in them that our senses can perceive. Some of them actually exist in the same time and space as our own, but we don’t know they are there because we have no natural means of sensing them.

 

There are dimensions that have a few things that cross over, and we can see bits and pieces of them, but never the entire picture. The bits and pieces that we see might be so random that they make no sense to us. It’s difficult to understand each other’s language when the only thing the languages have in common is the sound of the letter x.

 

When this story gets majorly confusing, it’s not that I don’t want to let you in on the big bad secrets, there isn’t even a way for ME to understand most of it. Wendy is much better equipped to help you out. Via magic, Wendy has been able to experience a level of interdimensional concurrence that a mere mortal like me never will.

 

Wendy can use sorcery to unlock it, but even she has no language or means of describing it to us. Only another sorcerer would be able to use the knowledge she collected and their normal mind wouldn’t understand it, they’d have to be put under a spell.

 

Wendy would sometimes exist in more than one dimension at a time, bring the information, via sorcery, across the dimensional boundary. Later, during a battle, she’d put herself under a spell so she could use the information once we hit an interdimensional crosspoint.

 

Does that make sense? If it doesn’t, you’re not alone. I’d ask Wendy what she saw when she was existing in another dimension and she couldn’t tell me because there is nothing in that dimension a human can see, hear or smell. Even so, something that happened there could be critically important and Giles would cast a spell that would let her “exist” in that dimension again when we needed her to.

 

Another thing I should probably talk about is power and where it comes from. Some of this might actually make sense in a little while, so stick with me.

 

The crucifix Spike gave me had power. I could feel it. It had the kind of power that could incinerate a vampire. The cloth it was wrapped in also had power, barrier power. You wouldn’t think a flimsy piece of silk could contain power to the degree that Spike could safely handle a holy relic, but silk isn’t your average fabric.

 

Silk is made from the cocoons of silkworms, caterpillars that eat leaves from mulberry trees. About 15,000 earth years ago, as the result of interdimensional war, a race of sentient beings from another dimension, had their sentience taken from them and put into the silk glands of those caterpillars in OUR dimension.

 

About seven thousand years ago humans developed an incredibly laborious process to unwind the cocoons to harvest the threads, which they weave into a beautiful, durable, shimmering cloth. Just the human history and mythology of silk are pretty impressive not to mention it’s supernatural ones. Silk is one of the strongest known natural fibers, not surprisingly it’s also one of the strongest known supernatural fibers.

 

Silk has intelligence and consciousness. It can be assigned a duty and it can remember and fulfill it. I doubt you’re ever going to hear someone say “Wrap that relic in some polyester double-knit.” It’s not going to happen. You need something with the history of silk to contain the power of a venerated relic. Silk was traditionally worn by royalty, not only because it’s beautiful and (at the time) extremely costly, but because it has power.

 

The crucifix that Spike brought me was believed to have splinters of the actual cross of Christ embedded in it. Wendy says that if all the bits and pieces of wood that people claim are from the true cross, actually WERE from the true cross, it would have been the size of a Redwood tree. In other words, there are a lot of fakes out there.

 

BUT…that doesn’t mean that the fakes have no power. They can be given power, and a lot of them have been. Some of them have as much power as the actual relics themselves. They get the power from all the believers, over centuries, that put their faith in them, blessed them, anointed them, prayed over them, prayed to them, lived and died for them. Those tiny bits of wood were imbued with all that power, and they hold onto it.

 

If I took an ordinary toothpick and said: “Hey, this is a piece of the cross” that wouldn’t immediately give it power, but add a several hundred years of faith, sacrifice, service, and devotion and that becomes one heck of an enchanted toothpick. Make sense?

 

We all have things they have sentimental value to us. We might even say they are sacred. Many of these things are fairly ordinary, but they’ve become important because we have assigned power to them. This power can increase when the item gets passed down from generation to generation, and more people assign power to it.

 

For example, Grandma’s engagement ring, or Grandpa’s pocket watch get passed down through a family, they become so important that family members will stop talking to each other and go to court over who gets a 200-year-old watch that doesn’t work anymore, because it’s been agreed upon that the item holds family power.

 

Things have power because they’ve been given it, and it can also be taken away. That’s why sacrilege is such a big deal. Defacing a sacred item, disrespecting it, or defiling it reduces its power and the insult and loss are felt by the people who venerated it. Sacrilege is an invitation to doubt. A general’s bars are useless unless other people respect them.

 

If power is so simple (not easy) to give and take, why do we allow anything at all to hold power over us? Because we need there to be places of high power and low power, things that harbor good and evil.

 

Imagine if our dimension was a smooth glass ball, perfectly round, perfectly transparent. Not a lot is happening there. Nada. Everything is the same, there’s nothing to fix your attention on.

 

But, if you start forming irregularities in the surface of the ball, then there is traction and things start happening and getting interesting. Inequality of power is what we call contrast. A dimension with no inequality of power is a dimension where literally nothing exists and nothing takes place. We need there to be places and things that have power. They keep things happening. The tug of war for power is the dynamic on which life itself is based.

 

We innately know this. We are attracted to power, and if none is handy we whip some up. Celebrities are only celebrities because we pay attention to them. Religions are made up of things people assigned power to. Money is nothing but a power contract. The struggle for power is what keeps everything chugging along.

 

The crucifix Spike gave me was powerful. It didn’t matter if there really were pieces of the cross in there, it matters that for a long time people believed there were and treated it as if there were. Countless people had imbued it with everything they believed about life in this dimension and eternity in another.

 

I understood power, and I used whatever talismans, medals, relics, or ointments I needed to do the job. Myths, even when they aren’t literally true, have the power of truth behind them. My experiences as Slayer taught me to pay attention. Keep your eyes open, pay attention to what you pay attention to. When you’re drawn to something, stop and ask yourself why, because there is power there, make sure it’s the kind you want to have on your side.

 

…………………………..

 

That evening at Giles’s, eating a bowl of cereal (I hadn’t gotten myself dinner assuming he’d have something worth eating) Giles gave me the bad news that the Hell fissure was getting fractious. To say that this terrified me doesn’t half begin to cover it.

 

The idea of having to face that hungry maw was mind numbing. It felt pointless. I’d failed once, why should I believe it wouldn’t go down the same way again? We hadn’t won, we’d run.

 

I had no better understanding of how to face that evil than I had a year ago, and now we knew it was specifically coming for me. Why? Good question, here we go with that power thing again.

 

As one little Slayer, I had a discreet amount of actual physical power, more than a human, but we’re not talking about Godzilla here. A lot of my power was latent. It came from the OFFICE of the Slayer and being part of the sisterhood. The role of Slayer meant something. It had a weighty power that came from all the stories, encounters, mojos and heroic deeds down through the ages.

 

The Slayer engendered a certain amount of respect and one of the duties of the acting Slayer was to not do anything that would rob the title itself of power because the girl who came after you was counting on you to keep it intact.

 

Killing me wasn’t that big of a deal, I’d be just another bratty teen taken out of the picture, but killing the Slayer and all that she represented, was a big deal. It could be a serious blow against the title of the Slayer and could do long-term damage to the ability of future Slayers to fight evil.

 

Taking a Slayer’s power could be considered an act of supernatural terrorism.

 

The Council had assigned a name to the evil that had taken Wes. It’s not it’s real name because humans can’t know it’s real name or even hold the idea of its real name in our minds. We referred to it as Ovid. Imagine Ovid as a void that wanted to suck Yours Truly into it. It wasn’t interested in merely killing me. Its intention was to annihilate me, make me all gone, make it as if I had never even existed, that would permanently destroy the Slayer lineage.

 

It would have a retroactive effect as well so that the good done by Slayers before me would also be disrupted and there would be a backward domino effect.

 

If you imagine the Slayer line as a string with knots it in, if you tug the string, or untie a knot, the entire line is affected. In the supernatural, things flow in more than one direction.

 

It takes a lot for me to refer to something as surreal because that’s basically a given in the Slayer business, but for some reason, sitting there shoveling frosted wheat into my mouth and listening to Giles tell me that something was revving up to erase me out of existence, just seemed so…weird.

 

The first time Ovid had done its thing and mashed my leg, we hadn’t exactly understood what it was about. We knew it wanted something and it was opening the fissure to get it. We knew it wanted me dead, but we didn’t understand about the gone part, the annihilated part. Wes DID understand and it was why he’d been willing to sacrifice himself to save the Office of the Slayer. Turns out that Wes had a higher security clearance than Giles.

 

The question on the table now was whether or not annihilation, in my case, meant gone, as in not existing in this or any other dimension or did it mean sending me to a dimension that was so difficult to access that it was virtually impossible that I would ever return. In other words, actual annihilation as opposed to effective annihilation.

 

Actual annihilation would end the Slayer line forever. I was a knot in the Slayer string, taking me out would take the string with me, we all be sucked into nothingness. The earth would never get another Slayer and some of the things Slayers before me had accomplished would fade away. Evil not only wouldn’t have the Slayer to push around anymore, but the effects of recent Slayers would be negated so Evil would get a boost on top of it. Also, all memory of my existence would go with me.

 

Effective annihilation means I’d be taken to a dimension I couldn’t return from. The Earth would be Slayerless until I died, at which point another Slayer would be called. My family and friends won’t ever see me again, they will begin to forget I was ever around, but once I actually kick off, the world will have a Slayer. Evil only gets a temporary break.

 

That is why the Council was so keen on finding out if Wes was alive and if not, where he’d been taken to. It was possible that that is where Ovid planned on sending me.

 

It had been a good day. I woke up with Spike in my bed. We had coffee with my mother. I and my mom were comfortable adult roomies. I studied and went to class and in my mind, I’d been preparing to have Dawn home for the weekend.

 

All day there’d been a sweet little domestic vibe going on. There I was enjoying yet another dose of domesticity, cereal with my buddy Giles. Turns out it came with a side of “by the way, this thing wants to destroy even the memory of you.”

 

As Slayer I’d never wanted to die, but there was some comfort knowing that if I did, I would have died doing good for humanity and I would be remembered fondly by loved ones. There is absolutely NO comfort in the thought that I would die failing to help humanity and no one would remember me.

 

That was a very odd thought to be holding in tandem with domesticity, connections and all the mundane things that make life pleasurable...family, English muffins with jam, Spike reading a novel on my bed. I liked those things. I wanted more of those things. I wanted to be around long enough to earn a B in my 20th Century Literature class.

 

“So how did they know to look for Wes, if they thought he might be annihilated, I mean, if he was they wouldn’t have even remembered him right?”

 

I had a right to know this, what with the Slayer being the actual target.

 

“Well, certainly the memories of Wes is what gave the Council hope. Whenever someone dies or goes missing in this manner it’s investigated. We never know when some small fact might be useful later. Knowing the way Ovid works is likely our only chance of defeating it.”

 

“Would my tracer thingie help” I hoped the answer would be yes. “Even if everyone forgot about ME?”

 

“Buffy, there likely will be no Slayer related arm of Council at all if Ovid is successful in annihilating you,” he so fondly reminded me.

 

“Oh. Yeah, that.”

 

“It is possible the tracer would help locate you over certain dimensional boundaries, it does have magical elements to it, but it’s unlikely that given the extreme intention at work, that you would go to such a dimension.”

 

None of this was making me feel any better, but it was making me even more determined to make this weekend with my mom and sister a good one. 

 

If Ovid achieved only effective annihilation, meaning I continued to exist SOMEWHERE, even if my family couldn’t remember me, I might still remember them. I planned to make memories worth remembering.

 

I wasn’t hungry for my cereal anymore and left it to stew on Giles’s coffee table.

 

I wondered if maybe the inner workings of Ovid’s evil plan should have stayed on the opposite side of Buffy’s “needs to know” boundary. The resulting nights lying awake in dread might seriously cut into my Slayer efficiency.

 

“Do we know when they strike?” I just had to ask.

 

“Not yet,” Giles was suddenly very busy leafing through a file, leading me to believe that the Council knew and decided THAT tidbit wasn’t going to make the “needs to know” cut.

 

You’re probably familiar with the philosophical question, “If you could know the time of your death, would you want to?” People with terminal diseases usually want a reasonable estimate. Families at a loved one’s deathbed want to know how many days or hours they have left.

 

Sitting on Giles’s couch I was pretty sure I wanted to know but only if it was a few weeks off.

 

If all I had was two days, I didn’t want the of the pressure of making all those final decisions: last meal, last movie, last thoughtful discussion with my mom, those sorts of things.

 

If I had two weeks, I felt like I could cover at least a few bases and actually savor things. The problem was that asking Giles to tell me might ruin everything. Maybe not knowing was better because I could maintain the illusion that I had two weeks left…

 

“Buffy dear.”

 

Yeah huh? I had pretty much zoned out. “You’d tell me, Giles, if you knew?”

 

“Seeing as we have to prepare, I wouldn’t have any choice really.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard Giles answer a simple “yes” or “no”.

 

Giles was much more British in his home than at school or on the track. He sounded nearly American at work, my point being, he’s a darn good actor. He wasn’t telling me everything he knew.

 

“Giles.”

 

He looked up, his brows high and his cheeks flat, trying to show an impassive face even though his eyes betrayed him.

 

“I love you.” I caught him off guard.

 

The color drained from his face and his mouth all but fell open...not the sort of response you hope to get when you tell someone you love them. I had thought it often enough before, but I don’t know if I’d ever said it to him. Sometimes I hugged him when we parted and it seemed I must have at least whispered it.

 

His reaction in that moment could have been related to the fact that he had some horrible information regarding my fate in his hands.

 

He set the file down and came and sat beside me. “I love you too.” He put an arm around me and turned my face to his. “I have no intention of letting them take you. YOU,” he emphasized. This was not only about protecting the Slayer lineage, if he was put in Wes’s place, he would say “Save Buffy.”

 

I relaxed against his shoulder, basking in the little bit of domesticity I had here at Giles’s, mundane things like mugs of tea and bowls of cereal and an extra change of clothes in a drawer. And now...someone who had told me they would die to save me, or at least had strongly implied it.

 

Giles had a fatherly role in my life, as well as coach. It wasn’t a straight on father vibe, there was a heavy dash of brother in there as well. Protective, but also willing to keep my secrets... sometimes.

 

When Wes was cracking a whip over something that wasn’t a priority, Giles occasionally colluded with me to get some off time, like a brother not telling mom you snuck out. Other times Giles was exactly like a stern father and definitely a tight-lipped coach who would make me go run laps when he felt I hadn’t done my best.

 

The phase where he would conspire with Angel to chase boyfriends away was over. Giles had his worries about me getting too caught up in civilian life at times, but he respected my decisions. True, he’d been on my back since the loss of Wes, but even that was because he cared about me, and desperately didn’t want to lose his Slayer, his Buffy. Having so recently lost a friend and colleague, we were all more protective of one another in those days.

 

Between him and my mother I had started to believe that I could stand on my own two legs, and thanks to great surgeons and Slayer healing, that was true.

 

“I get tired, and I get scared,” I admitted.

 

“Of course you do.” The part he didn’t add, was that he did as well. It struck me that Giles didn’t have much of a support system, even less since Wes died. Who did Giles take his fears to? Where did he get his domesticity?

 

I felt, for a minute, the way Spike must have when he told me not to wait for him. If I didn’t survive, I wanted Giles to go on. I didn’t want him to feel he was a failure for losing his Slayer or to stay hung up on Buffy, who died in the line of duty. “Don’t wait.” seemed a harsh thing to say, in this tender moment. It would sound as if I was throwing his love back in his face. Spike could get away with things I couldn’t. I wasn’t a vampire, I was supposed to have better manners.

 

“Do you think we’ll win?” I asked.

 

“You know Buffy, we will never win.”

 

Yes, I knew. We would only ever be keeping the balance. It was a step above damage control, but not much of a step.

 

“If we define win as ‘keep our mission alive for the duration’?” I was careful to say “our” so he knew that I understood that he was just as committed as me and that I considered him just as important.

 

As far as the Council was concerned, Watchers were far more expendable than Slayers. They could always send another Watcher or three my way. Technically, though I only had Wes and Giles on site, there was an entire division of Council members who could be considered my Watchers. The difference was that Giles didn’t care only about my Slayer role, he was watching over ME as well.

 

“You’re scared this time.” I said, which was a bit silly because he’d been scared many times, but after having lost Wes “scared” had been recalibrated. What we thought of as fear before was child’s play. Ovid had the intimidation factor against us now, on top of everything else.

 

“Fear is pointless,” he said. THAT surprised me. Here I had been thinking that my fear might aid in keeping me alive. He went on, “Children fear a shot at the doctor’s, it results in much more pain and upset than the shot ever could.”

 

My brow wrinkled, something was knitting together in my mind. I sat up. “That reminds me of something Spike said.”

 

Well, color Giles shocked. I’m quite sure that he couldn’t imagine any scenario where Spike and I had a discussion about fear. I realized that going on would be admitting to something I wasn’t going to be able to explain. Giles had some idea that Spike had done, or tried to do something sexually inappropriate but discussing the finer points of Slayerage didn’t fall into that category.

 

It didn’t matter anymore, I forged ahead. “Spike said not to wait. Not to put anything on hold waiting for something to happen.” I turned toward Giles. “The thing you’re worried about might never happen, and if it does, at least you wouldn’t have missed anything along the way.”

 

There was Giles, wondering why I had been getting lessons on life from the undead.

 

“The thing you’re hoping for might never happen either, and hope can hold you back as much as fear.” THAT was it, right there. THAT was why Spike told me not to wait because he knew that if I got hung up on the hope that he would return, it would keep me from moving forward.

 

Hope can be as crippling as fear. Want and desire are powerful forces. They keep us reaching, keep us moving, but hope and fear can paralyze us.

 

“Well Buffy, that’s--” This is where TV Giles would have started cleaning his glasses. The real Giles had contact lenses, so instead, he would crumple and uncrumple his face a few times.

 

“I need to stop being afraid of this Giles, being afraid won’t help.” This was a step beyond facing fear, and more than pushing past it, it was giving up fear entirely because it was a luxury I couldn’t afford.

 

I could tell by Giles face that he wasn’t sure if I was being reckless, foolhardy or slap happy in denial.

 

There was another thing Spike said that I wasn’t going to relay. It was what he said when I told him I didn’t know what I was doing. He said, “I think that you do.” And turned out, that I did.

 

“Is there such a thing as Slayer instinct?” I asked.

 

“Yes, of course, you know that. You’ve displayed it time and time again.” Giles assured me. He was wrong about one thing, even if I’d displayed it, I hadn’t known it. Knowing that I had something on my team, that was as elemental as the evil I was fighting, made a difference. It gave me a psychological edge.

 

I knew that Wes, Giles, Wendy and Xander had confidence in ME, and it helped, but it also meant I could fail them. We needed confidence in the Slayer as well as Buffy. After all, it was the Slayer Ovid was gunning for. I needed the Slayer not to fail. I needed to know the Slayer had a gut-level instinct to survive.

 

I took heart in the fact that the Slayer lineage was still here. I certainly wasn’t the first Slayer challenged this way. Evil had been gunning for the Slayer as long as Slayers had existed, and even though individuals had been picked off, the lineage itself was alive and well.

 

Ovid wasn’t going to lie down, the way Spike had and let me have my way with it. Still, the Slayer part of me knew what to do, it had to.

 

Oddly, the fact that Giles had stated out loud that we wouldn’t win, was a relief. It’s important to know what the actual goal is and to not be tilting windmills or trying to save face. It’s important that no energy, emotional or otherwise was being wasted trying to resuscitate what was already dead: childish fantasies and well-meant intentions.

 

It’s not lost on me that I am talking about intentions and the Highway to Hell in the same sentence. That idiom is true. Evil wins because people think intentions are enough to defeat it or even to hold it back. They aren’t, they just give you the illusion that you’re doing something. I didn’t have time for illusions. Not now.

 

………………………

 

Spike didn’t show up that night. I hadn’t expected him to. No illusions right? I was sure he had several other opportunities for vampire booty call, and that most of them involved experienced kinky vamps (ire or otherwise) that would do all the things I couldn’t, wouldn’t or maybe didn’t even know about.

 

OK, who am I kidding? A part of me did think he would show up, another part of me HOPED he would show up, but the rest of me didn’t wait up. It fell asleep with the instinctual part of myself that knew he wasn’t out there having vampire booty call and knew he wasn’t humming lullabies in the night to another bird.

 

I already I loved him, he was like some crazy oxygen to me, but since I’d never been in love before I could honestly hold back from acknowledging it, even to myself. These feelings could be anything, lust or even a weird vampire induced emotional rash.

 

I could say to myself, and even to him that I didn’t know what I was feeling, or what I was doing, but I did. I was climbing on board. When he said “I think that you do” he wasn’t just talking about sex, he meant all of it. There are things we feel and know by instinct, even if we’ve never felt or done them before.

 

The next day I offered to drive to LA to pick up Dawn but my mother refused. Instead, she met my father half way and did the child of divorce relay. I went to a morning study group on campus, then picked up ice cream on the way home for a “two sisters and a mom” treat later that day.

 

I made the decision not to feel jealous, or inferior, no matter what amazing new thing was going on in Dawn’s life. I made a decision to let my sister instinct kick in, my daughter instinct kick in, and remind myself that not everything in my life was a battle. Sibling rivalry was more like a game, and when we got tired of it, we could fold up the board and play something else.

 

Speaking of boards. Dawn was in the house less than five minutes when she noticed the board and dice were out. “Ohhhh were you playing backgammon? I LOVE backgammon!”

 

Seriously, how the hell do people learn to play backgammon? When was the last time you heard anyone even mention it? Where did this weird resurgence of the game come from?

 

“Yeah, mom was playing it,” I said. I had NO idea how to finish that sentence.

 

“I was playing it with Buffy’s--” Mom had no idea how to finish that thought

 

Giles had had the talk with Dawn, so heck, why not just say it!

 

“Mom was playing with my friend Spike.”

 

“You have a friend named Spike?”

 

“He’s a vampire.”

 

Dawn laughed heartily as if she got the joke. Clearly, she didn’t believe me.

 

“He’s very good looking,” my mom said, then shrugged. “Who am I kidding? He’s hot.”

 

Dawn looked from my mom to me, thinking maybe this wasn’t a joke after all.

 

“What happened to Xander?”

 

“Nothing happened to Xander or with Xander,” I explained. “We just didn’t happen.”

 

The look on Dawn’s face revealed that she was only a little disappointed, after all, if he hadn’t happened with ME, that meant that he was free to maybe one day happen with HER. She was 16, that’s how her mind worked. She was on the verge of going into full-on hormonal rage. (at least if she was anything like her sister)

 

Dawn grabbed her bag (modestly sized since everything she needed was already here) and she bounced up the steps. She squealed at the sight of something in her room. No doubt my mother had bought her some new item of clothing, a cd or something else that she’d been wanting.

 

I wasn’t going to be jealous, I wasn’t going to be jealous. I had my mom every day. That was 1000 times better.

 

“Sounds like you hit a homerun!” I congratulated my mother.

 

“Every now and then.” She gave a little smile, then she turned to me. “Any plans for tonight?”

 

“As a matter of fact I have a half gallon worth of plans. Picked up some ice cream on the way home.”

 

“Do vampires like raspberry cobbler ice cream?” She turned the topic back to what she had actually been getting at.

 

I had no idea if vampires liked ice cream at all.

 

“I don’t have plans with Spike.”

 

“You know, with your sister here.”

 

“Gotcha, don’t need to say another word.”

 

“Am I being old fashioned?” Mom asked. “I mean, she lives in this world. She knows people have sex.”

 

“You’re not being old fashioned. Knowing it is one thing, having it in your face or whatever.”

 

“That’s what I was thinking. It’s sort of an invasion of privacy.”

 

I blanched. “Were you not OK with having Spike here?”

 

“OMG Buffy, are you saying the two of you had sex?!!” she said in mock horror.

 

This time I blushed beet red.

 

I wondered if my sister would talk with my mom the way I did. Would they ever get there? Eventually, they would be grown up women together right? And me too? I wanted that. Suddenly I craved that. I wanted to see the day the three of us would talk and tease and feel comfortable being honest with each other, as grown women.

 

We heard another squeal. “Wow, you really hit it out of the park.” It took a lot to get two full-fledged squeals out of my sister.

 

We went upstairs to share the joy. Dawn wasn’t in her room. She was in MY room, looking at the pile of men’s clothing that was stacked on the chair.

 

“How much of a friend IS this Spike guy?” She turned to me, hand on hip.

 

“He just got into town and has no place to stay,” I explained the pile of clothing.

 

“You mean he’s staying HERE?” She said this with delight, not horror.

 

“No, just his clothes are.” There was indignation in my tone, which I had no right to, but I used just the same. I mean, seriously, where was I going with that? People DO tend to have their clothes with them wherever they stay.

 

I expected her to go into a round of “Buffy and Spike, sitting in a tree…” Then I remembered she wasn’t 10 anymore.

 

“Besides, what are you doing in my room anyway?” Again with the indignation.

 

“Just checking things out.” She looked around for any other evidence of male occupancy.

 

That’s when I remembered the bottle of shower gel that, oh so obviously, wasn’t any scent my mother or I was likely to buy. “Oh shit,” I said under my breath. The truth has a way of catching up to you. Things just wiggle their way into your life without your realizing just how far they’ve gotten.

 

I could probably sneak the shower gel out of the rack before my sister saw it. I put it on my “to do” list.

 

“What do you say,” My mom stepped in to change the subject, “we go get some food?”

 

Dawn’s face fell. “We’re not going to have something here? I mean, I don’t get home cooked meals very often. Not really dad’s kind of thing…unless he has a date.”

 

My dad had become one of those middle-aged men who had three recipes they’d mastered to impress women.

 

My mom had earned one happy squeal and a groan of disappointment, she had pretty much broken even.

 

“I can rustle up some grilled cheese sandwiches,” I said encouragingly and to my surprise, Dawn’s face lit up instantly. There aren’t many things better than a proper grilled cheese sandwich, and apparently, neither she or my dad had mastered them. From the look on her face when she bit into hers, it had been a way long time since she’d indulged in this delicacy. Finding out we had her favorite flavor of ice cream nailed it.

 

“Dad only buys low-fat frozen yogurt,” she snitched, scooping a second helping.

 

Dawn was a dancer, and rail thin. I wondered how she stayed that way if she ate at school, the way she did when she came home. She had the body of someone who ate half a boiled skinless chicken breast and three green peas for dinner, not two grilled cheese sandwiches and two generous helpings of ice cream. Maybe she starved herself when she was in LA. Maybe it was easy because my dad bought horrible food and couldn’t cook.

 

I was cleaning up the kitchen when the doorbell rang and my mother called out. “Buffy, I think your associate is here.”

 

Even though I was alone, I blushed. Sure enough, when I walked into the living room, there was Spike, standing near the doorway, looking expectantly around.

 

“You’re the sister.” He nodded at Dawn.

 

“And you’re the vampire.”

 

He looked more than a little shocked.

 

I guess Dawn had believed me after all!

 

“Did you come for your clothes?” she asked him.

 

Again, his eyebrows went up. Kudos to Dawn for managing to shock him twice in under 3 seconds.

 

“Yes, as a matter of fact.”

 

“Spike, this is Dawn.” I stepped forward to make proper introductions. “Dawn, Spike.”

 

They shook hands and her expression changed. She looked at his hand, then up to his face and shrank back a little. I wondered what had happened to make her react that way, then remembered she’d never actually met a vampire, let alone touched one. Their skin is cool, and their grip is strong. You can sense the strength that lies right under their skin.

 

I described to you that thing Spike does when he reads the tiny movements of palm muscles. He had done that to her, probably held her hand a tiny bit tighter and longer than was considered polite, and it freaked her out.

 

He wasn’t above using intimidation on people, from the first meeting, to establish his territory and position. He left no doubt in anyone’s mind that he had power and was more than willing to use it. It was kind of a jerk move to use on my sister, but it came to him naturally and it was who he was. She may as well be able to make an informed decision about him. (My mom and I referred to as the asshole alert)

 

If Dawn had been maintaining any doubts concerning his vampire status, he had just erased them.

 

“May I?” He motioned towards the stairs. All eyes were on me.

 

“Um, yeah, sure.” I walked to the stairs and led him up because it seemed ten levels of weird to let him go up alone, even though it felt at least five levels of weird to be going up there with him.

 

The minute we got to my room he was touching me. All the tension that had gathered in the strange little episode downstairs, drained right out of me. His arms were wrapped around me from behind and his chin rested against my temple.

 

“Hey vampire,” I teased.

 

“That’s THE vampire to you,” he teased right back. “Or do you have others hanging about?”

 

I was pretty sure he was kidding, and I was pretty sure the thing that had been going through my mind, was going through his. I was hoping that he hadn’t been hugging some other woman to his chest last night and teasing her, and he was hoping I didn’t have a spare vampire in my closet.

 

Impossible. Buffy. Impossible. No matter what you are feeling, this vampire is NOT falling in love with you.

 

I wondered if vampires even fell in love? Wouldn’t they have outgrown that after, I don’t know, 100 years or so? For some reason I was under the delusion that falling in love was something only young, stupid people did and you were only truly mature if you’d aged out of it.

 

(That may actually be true. Spike isn’t exactly the most mature being on the planet)

 

“I’m the Slayer, of course, I have other vampires hanging about, I have vampires coming out the wazoo.”

 

“Yes, but do you have any others going in the—“

 

“Hey,” I stiffened and struggled against him in protest.

 

He let me twist around till I was facing him. “That’s the answer I was hoping for.” He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me.

 

I went all melty inside. He wanted me for his own…which amounted to exactly nothing. He might have wanted 100 women to be his alone, while he went from flower to flower like some evil vampire bee.

 

“Mind if I use your shower?” the words were already falling from his lips as he pulled out of the kiss.

 

“I guess that’s ok. Where are you staying tonight?”

 

“You don’t need to worry about that.” He began to go through his clothes.

 

“I’m not worried, just curious.”

 

He cocked his head at me, as if he didn’t quite believe me, but then decided I was on the up and up and this wasn’t some jealous girl thing.

 

“We need to talk.” He bit through the plastic hang tag to one of his new shirts. “Your sis be here all weekend?”

 

“Yeah.” It’s rare that anything following, “We need to talk” is going to be good.

 

He tossed the tag in the wastebasket and frowned at the one that was sewn onto the waistband of a pair of jeans. I took them from him and nipped at the threads with my nail clippers.

 

“I need you to do something.” He was peering at me as if I was performing something far more complicated than removing clothing tags.

 

Ah, so here was the catch. the reason why he’d come to town and looked me up.…

 

He went into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out several crumpled papers and looked through them. He singled out a folded pamphlet. “There are some prayers.” He poked his finger at it. “It’s a novena. Start tonight.”

 

Vampire telling me to pray? “What?”

 

“The cross I brought you, Vera Cruz. It’s very powerful. You need to say these prayers. Every night, don’t miss it. Do you have any candles?”

 

“I think we have birthday candles downstairs.”

 

“I don’t have time to explain it now. Read this and do what it says.”

 

“Spike why? And what is Vera Cruz?”

 

“I don’t have time. WE don’t have time.” He was frowning, trying to think of what he could tell me now that would make some sense. “Start tonight, you have to do it before midnight. Don’t miss it. I’ll explain later.”

 

He grabbed his things and headed for the bathroom. “Go back to your mum and sis.” He was still frowning. Color me confused.

 

The bathroom door closed, I unfolded the pamphlet and looked at it. Novena to the Cross of Christ…Light candle, pray…every day for nine days…benefits and promises. If possible, visit and venerate a relic of the True Cross…Vera Cruz.

 

He’d brought it for me, to keep me safe. From what? What did he know? I heard the water going in the shower. I set the pamphlet beside the crucifix in its silk cloth and went downstairs.

 

Dawn and my mother were studying my face as I descended the steps.

 

“Everything OK?” Mom asked.

 

“Yeah, fine.” I must have looked very puzzled.

 

“Buffy, are you sure?” Dawn checked.

 

“Yeah, it’s fine. Spike just gave me something.”

 

My mother grew suspicious, not because she thought Spike might have given me something bad, but because she recognized the look on my face. Worry, big worry about some upcoming Big Bad.

 

“So, he’s kinda hot,” Dawn said.

 

“Huh?”

 

“Spike. He’s hot.” She gave a knowing nod.

 

I looked at her, but it was more of a case of looking through her. Distracted didn’t begin to describe what I felt. In my line of work, having spells shoved into your hands and to be told to start praying was hardly ever a good thing.

 

Thoughts from my conversation with Giles flashed through my mind…This could be it. Make memories. If you were going to eat your last bowl of ice cream ever, which flavor would you choose?

 

“So is he your boyfriend?” Dawn asked.

 

My mom watched my face for my reply.

 

“He’s an associate.” It was more honest than saying he was my boyfriend. There wasn’t a word for what Spike and I were, or if there was one, I didn’t know it.

 

“You two work together?”

 

“Sometimes.”

 

Your last meal, your last television show, your last board game…

 

It’s SO much better not to know when you are going to die…to not have to look at your sister and your mother and know you can’t let them know.

 

“So! Are we watching a movie?” I needed to get this night back on track.

 

“I thought we’d play a few games of backgammon,” my mother informed me.

 

“You can watch us, you’ll pick it up,” Dawn assured me, pushing aside magazines and glasses to make room for the board.

 

I was relieved to have been sidelined. It would be easy enough to feign interest.

 

A little while later Spike came down, freshly dressed, looking rather too much like an average guy on the street for my liking.

 

“Thanks for your hospitality ladies.” He made a little bow. “Have a lovely evening.” He was reaching for the door. I am sure there was panic in my eyes, he shot me a look to still me.

 

He was right, panic never helps. I tried to read his eyes. He couldn’t expect me to remain calm, to not want answers.

 

He grinned when he noticed the backgammon board. “Pay attention Slayer, maybe you’ll learn something.” I was pretty sure he wasn’t referring to the game.

 

“Bye Spike,” my mother said as he walked out. I said nothing as I watched him go.

 

“Isn’t it kind of weird for a vampire and the Slayer to be ‘associates’?” Dawn said breezily.

 

I wasn’t going to explain to her that you work with whoever you need to, to get the job done. War made for curious allies.

 

“Let’s not talk about Slaying tonight,” I said, forcing a smile. My mother was studying my face again.

 

“Could you pour me a glass of wine?” she asked casually.

 

“Want anything Dawn?” I said, getting up.

 

“Can I have wine?” she asked hopefully.

 

She had to settle for iced tea.

 

We did more talking than backgammon playing. I tried to pay attention but every time I thought I was getting the hang of it, someone would make a move that made absolutely no sense to me. I checked the clock and panic shot through me. It was nearly midnight. I didn’t know where the birthday candles were and I hadn’t read the pamphlet.

 

“I’m heading up.” I stood up stiffly and faked a yawn. “G’night Dawnie.” I gave her a hug. “G’night mom.” I gave her a kiss.

 

“Awww, not yet Buffy, I thought we’d, you know…stay up and have girl talk.”

 

“Tomorrow. Maybe.” I said, ignoring the disappointment in her eyes.

 

I went to my room and beside the crucifix and pamphlet were two squat votive candles that hadn’t been there earlier. The window was open a few inches. Spike was serious about this. VERY, VERY serious.

 

I locked my door and thought how weird it was that I was locking the door so I could pray, and I had no idea why or who for. I sat on the edge of my bed and read through the pamphlet.

 

Wendy and Giles had told me many times, I didn’t have to understand a spell for it to work. Sometimes obedience was as good as faith.

 

Beside the candles was a cigarette lighter, not a cheap disposable lighter, but a nice refillable one.

 

I fished a sticky foil circle, from a yogurt lid, out of the wastebasket, set one of the votive candles on it and lit it. I carefully unwrapped the crucifix and leaned it against the base of my lamp. I got on my knees, opened the pamphlet and began to pray.

 

The pamphlet had the prayer of the crucifix in Latin and English. I had read the English, and could not say it. I didn’t feel it or believe it, the words wouldn’t come, so I had stopped and read the prayer in Latin. The syllables had babbled out of me. I sensed power in the rhythm and flow of them. I ended up saying the prayer three times, until I felt it was right, aKNEW it was right.

 

That night I had a dream. I sawan old church, it had simple wooden pews and doors open to the sides. In an alcove was a shrine. The alcove was blood red inside and painted in gold were the words “Vera Cruz, servatis a malefico”. (Cross of Christ, deliver us from evil)

 

An old woman was crying as she crawled on her hands and knees, mouthing prayers, moving towards the shrine. She dropped pennies into a tin money box and took a candle from her skirt pocket. She began to search madly for something to light it with. She looked desperate, I reached into my pocket, feeling for the lighter.

 

I woke and sat up. The crucifix was still upright on my bedside table. I peered at it in the dark. I reached for Spike’s lighter and flicked it, for the woman in the dream. I lit the candle and felt my heart relax. Deliver us from evil. I had done my duty.

 

Why the dream? Who was the woman? What would happen if I didn’t have a candle, or if the woman never found a means to light hers? I suppose the spell wouldn’t be cast. It was like that sometimes. Sometimes prayer wasn’t about intention, it was about faith, faith that it would do what it promised, if I did my part, whether or not I understood the details.

 

Spike’s soiled clothes were in my hamper. I’d noticed them when I undressed after saying my prayers. It was another small way he’d taken a stand. His stuff with my stuff. For two years I hadn’t been able to get him out of my mind and now his inside out socks and shirt were hanging out with my bras and panties.

 

I blew out the candle and went to sleep.

 

**************************

 

Q&A

Do vampires really turn to dust and do demons dissolve? 

Depends. Some of the Slaying involves sending things back to their own dimensions (that is why certain mystical weapons have power over certain demon types, they don’t kill them as much as send them home or free them from this dimension) when that happens they truly go, poof! Because they go someplace else.

Most demon's bodies burn easily so that is a quick and easy way to get rid of them, but some need to be buried or chopped and the pieces dispersed (yuck) so they can't come back together and have the demon revive itself.

Vampires dust or melt depending on the method used to kill them. Their clothing doesn't dust/melt with them. If you don't have time to wait for the natural process, they burn pretty easily. 

Supernatural/magic flame is the fastest method of all.


	13. The One Where Spike and I Go For Coffee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spike has some confusing and alarming news for the Slayer.

The One Where Spike and I Go For Coffee

 

Giles called early the next morning telling me he’d received intel from the Council, the showdown was happening sooner than he anticipated.

 

“Let me guess. Would it be in about 9 days?”

 

“Yes actually, but why did you say 9, a rather odd number, Have you heard something?”

 

Yuh huh. Should I tell Giles everything? It was possible that what Spike told me was true, and might be the lens we needed to see the situation clearly. It was also possible that everything Spike told me was crap and would only make it harder for us to see anything at all. I needed more information. I needed to know why Spike was here and why he brought me this crucifix and why the hell I had to babble Latin at it for 9 days.

 

“Buffy we must meet and go over this information…We don’t have details exactly, but if we put our brains together we might make something of it.”

 

“Dawn is here, we have a whole day planned,” I said with no emotion in my voice. My brain was processing information as impassively as a computer. Input new data, apply to the equation.

 

“Buffy, I don’t need to tell you how important this is…”

 

We can’t win. The best we can hope for is to save the Slayer line, for now. I knew I wasn’t going to make it. I am not a pessimist. I did believe that we would save the Slayer lineage, but I believed just as strongly that I would die doing it.

 

When you pour cream into black coffee it billows up, like storm clouds. That morning, fewer than 10 minutes before Giles called, I filled my mug with coffee and when I poured the cream in, I saw something that looked like the face of evil laughing in victory. People read tea leaves and clouds in the sky, it’s not so strange that I read cream in my coffee.

 

I trusted Giles, I knew he was fallible, but I trusted his heart. He’d been with me through it all. He didn’t breeze into and out of town. He had made a lifelong vow. It had meant so much to me, the evening before when Giles said he wouldn’t let me die. Hearing that had felt so good. I wasn’t going to tell him about the face in my mug. It was just coffee cream.

 

The crucifix couldn’t be so easily dismissed, it’s not like I just found a priceless relic in a parking lot. I needed to talk to Spike, clearly, he knew something. It wasn’t an accident that he showed up now. It hadn’t been a coincidence when he showed up the last time either.

 

Later that morning, my mom, sister and I were in the kitchen making waffles. Our mother had always been opposed to Dawn to drink coffee, saying she was too young. Dawn’s response that morning was “Geez mom, it’s not like it’s alcohol. I drink Red Bull all the time and that has WAY more caffeine.”

 

So I lined up three mugs, poured the coffee and reached for the cream. OK, fat-free half and half, whatever.

 

I closed my eyes, counted to three, looked into my mug and poured. Pretty, pretty billows, but nothing else. No faces, no tingles, nothing ominous. Dawn grabbed the cream and poured hers.

 

“Wow, check this out,” she said, “It looks just like—“ I practically leaped at her and I actually did push her head out of the way so I could see. “a rabbit…”

 

It wasn’t the clouds themselves, which change so fast that there is no time to show anything to anyone, it was the little pattern on top, like a scum. (if you drink coffee you know what I mean) It did vaguely resemble a rabbit. “Oh, yeah. You’re right,” I gave a weak little laugh.

 

“Maybe mom shouldn’t let you drink coffee. Hyper much?” Dawn said.

 

Mom was watching me cautiously. She’d seen me hyper before. She knew that sometimes it was “work” related. If I had Slayer instinct, she had “Mom of Slayer” instinct.

 

When I went to check the waffle iron she came beside me and asked quietly, “Did you have a visitor last night?” Of course, she was referring to Spike.

 

“No, he didn’t come back.” Which was true as far as what she was alluding to, he’d come back only long enough to leave the candles.

 

“I mean it Buffy. If he comes here I want him to come through the door. That’s our agreement. Everyone knows he’s in the house when he IS in the house.”

 

“I know. HE knows.”

 

“He’s a vampire, he’s not concerned with playing by the rules.” Did she really think she needed to remind me?

 

“Does he cheat at backgammon?” I swear I did not say that to be snotty. I really wanted to know. I mean, you can tell a lot about a person if they cheat at board games.

 

My mother looked as if I had slapped her.

 

“No, that’s not what I meant. just was wondering if we can trust him.”

 

“You’re asking ME? You invited him in and you want me to tell you whether we can trust him, based on backgammon?”

 

I closed my eyes for a second trying to figure out where to go with this next. “Just one more piece of information…”

 

“Does letting me win count as cheating? It’s dishonest. He was willing to do that to get on my good side.”

 

Dawn came over. “What’s so interesting. I want in on the whisper fest.”

 

Neither my mother nor I said anything.

 

“Well, must be REALLY interesting if it’s that big a secret.” Her face showed disappointment at being left out. “If it’s about your boyfriend, I’m totally OK with him spending the night.”

 

It was about who she considered to be my boyfriend, but it had nothing to do with him spending the night. OK, scratch that, it sort of did but not in the sexy way.

 

“Just a little discussion on house rules,” my mother told her.

 

I forked the waffle free from the iron and put it on a plate. Dawn immediately claimed it, her reward, I suppose, for being left out.

 

I poured more batter on the iron.

 

“Mom, it’s not like you think. Spike IS here on business.” It couldn’t be coincidental.

 

“Then he should be meeting you at Giles’s right? He should be staying with Giles.”

 

“It’s complicated.” That sounded so stupid coming out of my mouth. “I’m not sure yet where he fits in.”

 

“Fits into?”

 

My mom didn’t know anything about the impending doom. She couldn’t.

 

“Some new information Giles just got. He called me. He says we need to convene. But don’t worry, I told him today is out of the question.” I gave her a bright grin.

 

“I know you can’t tell me everything. I respect that, but if there’s something you should tell me. You would. Right?”

 

“No one here is in danger.” My voice was robotic.

 

“You’re here.” She touched my arm. “Does that statement include you?”

 

I swallowed hard. She challenged me with her eyes.

 

“Can we not talk about this, today? I just want to--” I felt tears stinging their way into my eyes.

 

My mom’s lips got tight. She could read me. She could tell when I was overwhelmed and of course she blamed it on Spike. It wasn’t. It really and truly wasn’t. I didn’t think...

 

“It’s just that I need a vacation from it. OK? A day, with you two. I feel a little burned out.” I wiped away a tear.

 

She sipped her coffee. “I don’t like this.” Of course, I knew that, but I also knew she needed to say it for the record.

 

“You can have today, but when I get home Sunday night, from dropping off your sister you and I are having a LONG talk. ALONE.”

 

The more I assured her this had nothing to do with Spike the less she was going to believe me, so I let it go. She had a point, I hadn’t been acting this way before he showed up.

 

It’s better not to know when you’re going to die. I was on the verge of tears all day, even though it was a really good day. At one point my sister said to my mom when she thought I wasn’t paying attention, “What’s up with Buffy? Did she and Spike have a fight?” Apparently, Dawn was going to spend all evening on the phone relaying the details of the day, and the supposed drama with my boyfriend, to all her friends in LA. I hoped she was leaving out the vampire bit.

 

I needed to go upstairs and say my prayers. I smiled at the thought of that, not exactly a Summer’s family tradition. We hadn’t even recited “Now I lay me down to sleep...” when we were little. Though, if I’m going to be honest, I had said it many nights since I’d begun the Slayer gig. Still, that was loads different from kneeling and praying in Latin.

 

My smile was interrupted by a knock at the front door. I knew who it was. I opened the door, Spike didn’t bother to cross the threshold. “We NEED to talk.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me outside.

 

My mother’s head swiveled around from where she was sitting, reading. Seeing Spike yank me into the dark wasn’t helping his cause.

 

“Mom, I’ll just be…”

 

She stood up and came over to the door. “Is everything alright here?” She was looking at Spike.

 

His jaw got tight. He had no patience for this. He looked at me to explain things to my mother, which made zero sense since I had no idea what was going on. I shot him a look and he removed his hand from my arm.

 

“Yes mom, no problem. Don’t forget, I can take him.” I gave her a weak smile.

 

“Hang on,” she said. She returned a second later and handed me a stake. “Just in case.” Again, her eyes focused on Spike.

 

She closed the door very slowly.

 

We waited, wondering if she was standing just on the other side of the door.

 

“Ok, what’s so important?” I asked, starting down the walk to the street.

 

He looked at me as if I was stupid. “What’s coming. It’s big,” he said, obviously expecting me to know what he was talking about.

 

I did, but what did he know of it? I stopped walking. He was right, we DID need to talk. My pending annihilation wasn’t a vampire issue. I had hoped it didn’t even qualify as common underworld knowledge.

 

“Why are you here?”

 

“Depends on who you ask.”

 

“I’m asking you.”

 

“Tribunal sent me but—“

 

“What does the Tribunal know?”

 

“Same as the Council does. They’re practically hand in glove, not officially but in the end ...spies and such.”

 

“Is the Tribunal in on this?” The Tribunal rarely got involved in any grand schemes.

 

“When someone is talking about taking out the whole Slayer line, yeah, the Tribunal takes an interest.”

 

Spike really WAS here on Tribunal business.

 

“Isn’t there someplace we can go?” His voice had a pleading tone to it.

 

“Do you have any money?”

 

He looked confused. “Yeah, why?”

 

“Let’s go get coffee.” My purse was inside and I didn’t want to face my mother again.

 

Spike seemed to like that suggestion so we headed down the sidewalk. It was cool out, automatically he took off his jacket, (which he wore mostly because it was handy for carrying things) and handed it to me. I shrugged into it and put my hands in the pockets. I felt a Bic lighter and pulled it out.

 

Our eyes met. “Yeah, I have yours…thanks…for the candles too.”

 

He gave me a nod.

 

“So the Tribunal did send you.”

 

“In a manner of speaking.” He stopped walking. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

 

I handed him the ciggies and lighter in response.

 

“They weren’t keen on sending me back here. What with that stunt I pulled. The leg.” He lit up and took a drag. “And you.”

 

“ME?”

 

“I didn’t count on you telling your Watcher about our…thing.” He stuffed his lighter in his jean’s pocket and frowned at the cigarette pack, I put my hand out for it, glad it was dark so he wouldn’t see me blush.

 

“I sort of had to.”

 

“HAD to?” He clearly wasn’t buying it.

 

“The Council said you were in town to deliver the relic, They thought you were in on the ritual. I thought maybe, you were trying…I didn’t know exactly.”

 

“Yeah, well. Council wasn’t happy about it, Tribunal thought I was a daft fool, not that they cared so much about me sleeping with you. They were pissed as all get out over the relic.” He grinned. “But with your Watcher gunning for me, I was taken off Slayer duty. Said I was a loose cannon, that they couldn’t trust me.”

 

“Because we?”

 

“Well, yeah that. Stupid thing to do, trespassing on the Council property so to speak. Tribunal doesn’t care to make an enemy of the Council, they’ve been helpful to each other. They thought I’d forced you and put it all at stake, no pun intended.”

 

I could see the Tribunal’s point. If their emissary raped the Slayer, that would definitely put a dent in future negotiations with the Council. “Did you tell them? I mean, that you didn’t force me?”

 

He gave a derisive chuckle. “Doesn’t matter what I did, Luv. Matters what the Council makes of it.” He took another long draw then blew it out his nose. “You think they’d see it any different just because you went along with it?”

 

No, I guessed not.

 

“It was a bloody stupid thing to do.” He tossed down the cigarette butt. My heart sank. “They sent me on Tribunal business, not personal business. But I felt like I owed you one.” He nudged my shoulder.

 

I smiled in spite of myself. “I was afraid that they’d kill you. The Council.”

 

“I’m sure they thought about it. But it was too late yeah? You’d already been defiled, not likely I was going to try again seeing as the Tribunal grounded me.”

 

“GROUNDED you?” I thought that was reserved for wayward teens, not Big Bad Vampires.

 

“It’s why it took me so long to come back.”

 

My bullshit meter went into the red zone. He was a vampire, he could come and go as he pleased. He might be an emissary for the Tribunal, but he wasn’t their puppet.

 

“You were banned from Collinsville?” I said doubtingly.

 

“Banned from anything this side of the Atlantic. It’s why I was in England, wish you’d have looked me up.”

 

I didn’t bother responding to that.

 

“But you’re here now.”

 

“Wasn’t easy to talk them into it. What with all that’s going on.”

 

I stopped, “What do you know about what’s going on?”

 

I saw him swallow down a lump, and wondered what lie he was about to feed me. Maybe I should have waited to ask this until we were in the coffee shop, where it was light and I’d be able to read his face more easily.

 

“I know they want to end the Slayer line.” Now he sounded robotic.

 

“Who?”

 

“The big evil.”

 

“OK, And the Tribunal thinks this is jolly good news.” I just had to throw a Britishism in there to get his goat. “But someone else is doing the dirty work for them, so why are YOU here?”

 

“I needed to see you,” he said in a small voice.

 

“Come on Spike, I’m not naïve enough to think you came back here because of me.”

 

He was quiet for a moment. “You’re naïve enough to think I didn’t.”

 

I was confused for a second, what did that even mean?

 

“Buffy, they’re going to kill you.”

 

So he had braved the ocean waves to tell me what I already knew?

 

I can’t tell you, how much I wish I could have told him he was wrong. “So the Tribunal doesn’t care anymore since I’m as good as dead anyway?” I heard the tears in my voice.

 

“I talked them into letting me come. Told them I could help out.”

 

“The Tribunal.”

 

“Yeah, said I’d come out here and distract you or what not. They figured I’d be able to rattle your cage. I told them I could. Told them I knew just how to upset you.”

 

Well, that was pretty much true.

 

“They sent you here to rape me?” What kind of fucked up plan was this?

 

“Funny yeah? It’s why they kept me away, but it’s why they finally let me come back. I never thought I’d see the place again.”

 

The place, not ME.

 

“You could have come on your own.” There it was. my little girl voice.

 

“No, I couldn’t.” He stopped and turned to me. “You think it’s easy to cross an ocean?”

 

“I thought vampires did that sort of thing all the time. Come and go as you please. ”

 

“Not easy, Luv, not anymore. Can’t hop on a pirate ship. You need papers now, identification, and plane fair is bloody expensive. The Tribunal takes care of that. After what happened here last time, they pulled my paperwork. I didn’t exist. Had no passport. I was grounded.”

 

We stepped into the commercial area, the coffee shop was just a block down. This just got weirder and weirder. I was walking with a vampire who’d been sent overseas to rape me. I had a stake in HIS jacket pocket. This would probably be a good time to use it.

 

“So you came to say goodbye?” I waited while he got the door for me.

 

“No, I came to save you.”

 

The Council couldn’t save me. Giles couldn’t save me. Wendy couldn’t save me, but Spike could? Pardon me for laughing.

 

I sat down to collect myself while Spike got our drinks. If Spike had been sent here to rattle me, he was doing a good job of it. He was a master at the game of “Confuse the Slayer”. Heck, he was even getting in good with my mother. He had mind blowing sex with me and now he tells me he was sent here to rape me, but instead he’s going to foil an evil plot. This was a total mind fuck.

 

If he was really in trouble with the Tribunal, for what he’d done last time he was in Collinsville, what better way to get back in their good graces than to help them out this time? He could prove he could was worthy of their trust, and get back his traveling shoes.

 

He put a latte in front of me and sat down with his steamy cup of tea. All my doubt slipped away for one instant as he stirred the tea and inhaled the steam. Wow, he was good. Only a very very bad guy could act this convincingly, disarmingly, like a nice guy.

 

“So you’re here to save me.” I reminded him.

 

“You said your prayers last night?” He sounded like a stern father.

 

I nodded, and he looked relieved.

 

“And how do you propose to save me, I mean if the Council can’t--”

 

“The bloody Council.”

 

“Has my back.”

 

He took a sip of his tea, gave me the wait signal and went to get more sugar. I looked down at my latte. Spike had gotten the drinks, what if he’d slipped something into mine?

 

He was back and stirring furiously.

 

“You’re a good Slayer,” he said. I wondered if he expected me to thank him for the compliment. “Committed.”

 

I really wanted that latte, but here he was reminding me of my commitment, and if I had any suspicion that he’d altered it…

 

“Has the Council ever asked you to die for them?” He met my eye.

 

“For them? No. For the mission? They know I would. It’s the job.”

 

“And you’ve never refused them.” He wasn’t asking.

 

I shook my head. “No, not so far.” Not even after my leg. Not even after Wes.

 

“They don’t have YOUR back, Buffy.” He wasn’t calling me Slayer now. “The Council’s responsibility is to the Slayer, not you.”

 

Not pretty, but true. He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know.

 

“What are they doing to back you up?”

 

I SO was not going there. I wasn’t telling him a damned thing! He was an emissary from the Tribunal who admitted the Tribunal was helping Ovid.

 

“Not really your business.”

 

“Doesn’t matter. I told you. The Tribunal knows just about everything.”

 

“Yeah, I’m sure.” They knew a lot, but the Council didn’t share truly sensitive information. “I think we still have a few tricks up our sleeve.”

 

He chuckled, “No doubt.” He drank some of his tea, happy now that it was sweet enough.

 

“Why didn’t they send you another Watcher?”

 

I opened my mouth to speak but realized I didn’t have an answer. I had over two years left as Slayer. Why hadn’t they sent me another Watcher? I guessed it was because Wes had taught me everything I needed to know.

 

“What are you getting at? You said we needed to talk. I’m here. So talk. No more going around in circles.”

 

He met my eye. “Ovid.” It was the first time he’d used the name and it unnerved me. “It doesn’t care about you, it wants the Slayer. It’s here, now, because the Slayer is at the fissure.”

 

Again he wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know.

 

“So why don’t they just send you on vacation?” He sat back with his tea and looked at me.

 

“With big evil brewing? It’s sort of a bad time to send me on a trip.”

 

“Why not?” He shrugged. “Seems easy enough. Ovid can’t snatch you if you’re not here. Problem solved.”

 

“No, problem ignored. There’s no point in having a Slayer if you’re going to send it away whenever danger rears its head.” Why was I arguing with the enemy about this?

 

“They need you here now, to draw Ovid out.”

 

“I guess you could say that I’m bait.” Not very flattering, but true.

 

“But if Ovid catches you, it’s bye bye Slayer, forever,” he went on.

 

I suddenly felt hot, and sick. Forever and here I was wasting an evening with him feeding me bullshit.

 

“You have a good sorcerer? You’re going to need one.”

 

“I have A sorcerer. Wendy and Giles both practiced in that area. Their combined skills probably added up to those of one decent sorcerer.

 

“The Council hasn’t sent you a second Watcher or a sorcerer? With all that’s coming, you don’t think that’s odd?”

 

I hadn’t thought about it at all, so no, I didn’t think it was odd.

 

“The entire Slayer line is in danger and they’re sending you in there with a pea shooter. After they saw what happened before. Saw what happened to your Watcher?”

 

“He died, in the line of duty.” I looked away for an instant.

 

“He didn’t die, Buffy, he’s gone.”

 

“The Council said--”

 

“The Council will say anything it takes to get the job done.”

 

“And you know better than the Council?”

 

“Tribunal has spies.” His brows twitched.

 

He looked slightly uncomfortable. Funny, I would have thought Spike would prefer to be a “spy” rather than a mere “emissary”.

 

“You’re saying the Council wouldn’t have told Giles if Wes was gone? If he’d been taken?” The term “needs to know” basis rang in my head. Wes said “Save the Slayer”, Giles had said he would save ME.

 

“So where is Wes?” Fine, if he knew so much let him prove it!

 

“Where Ovid wants him. Some other dimension pressing him for information no doubt, and he had lots of it. He knew what he was about.” Spike wasn’t wrong. If they were going to grab a Watcher for intel, Wes was the one to go for.

 

The Council would have told us. They investigated for months. They would have told us. But then again, what good would it have done? It would only scare us, and it wouldn’t help Wes.

 

My head was beginning to throb. I really wanted some of that latte.

 

“They need you here to draw Ovid out. They can’t afford to lose the Slayer, but they didn’t send any extra support? They didn’t send another whiz kid Watcher?”

 

OK, this was sounding sort of bad.

 

“You’re saying they want me to die? But that doesn’t make sense…”

 

“Not saying they want you to die. They’re going to kill you.”

 

I began to laugh out loud. I had just about fallen for his coming to town to rape me or distract me or whatever, but now he’s telling me the Council is going to take out their own Slayer, just when she’s needed most.

 

He sat there with that look, the patient one, letting me get over myself. He fully expected me to have my laugh, then come round to see things his way. Well, sorry buddy, that wasn’t going to happen.

 

“They need me.”

 

“They need a Slayer and the second you’re dead they get another. No one knows where she’s going to pop up. Not Ovid. Not even the Council. 

"You draw Ovid out, and before it can nasty you away forever…the Council kills you. Then they get a new Slayer, safe, sound and far away from Ovid’s grasp.”

 

I felt tingles, big major tingles, and the color draining from my face.

 

“They didn’t send you another Watcher because they didn’t want to send one of their best men out here to die,” Spike said with a sneer.

 

“But Giles?”

 

“Is expendable. Once they kill you, how do you think they’d handle HIM? He’s not like the other one. I’ve seen all of you together. He’ll do anything to save you. Even die. You both go down fighting, Ovid loses and Collinsville becomes a closed case file.”

 

I really wanted that latte. “How do you know this? The Tribunal knows this?”

 

“The Tribunal thinks Ovid is going to get you. They WANT Ovid to get you.”

 

I looked at him, after all, he was the Tribunal emissary.

 

“Bit like Giles I am,” he said quietly, sounding like he wasn’t completely comfortable with that fact.

 

There were a lot of hands in his supposed “Operation Take Down Buffy”, and he expected me to believe his wasn’t one of them?

 

“Really Buffy, look at the pieces.”

 

“This is a pretty huge piece. Why doesn’t the Council take me out now?”

 

“Because they don’t want anyone to know and they don’t want Ovid to find out where the new Slayer is. They can’t let it have a head’s up, just to pop up and snatch her right out from under their noses. They need it to struggle with you. You’ll keep it busy”

 

“And you distract me, make me do something stupid, make me think I’m safe. Then I’m not where the Council wants me to be so that Ovid actually CAN snatch me.”

 

“That’s the Tribunal’s plan. Their intel says the Council is going to take you out themselves.”

 

“You could kill me now. New Slayer pops up, Ovid grabs her, Tribunal still wins.” Easy peasy!

 

“I could.” He finished his tea. I waited. “But I’m here to save you.”

 

“From the Council?”

 

“From everything.”

 

Fuck…this was all too much. If what he said was true, if half of what he said was true. If one tenth of what he said was true, I was screwed. I grabbed my latte and took a gulp.

 

I had so many questions I couldn’t grab hold of just one to ask him. Why was he here to save me? was the most logical question of all.

 

In my mind, I saw his stupid balled up sock in my laundry hamper and thought, that was why. I heard his voice in my head saying “I think that you do.” I felt him reach for my hand across the table…

 

I wasn’t naïve enough to think he’d come back for me. He said I was naïve enough to think that he wouldn’t.

 

My brain did not compute. This. THISn THIS hand holding, this whole insane story he just wove for me. I would have been better off if he’d raped me. I’d be less confused, less doubtful. I would know what it meant. THIS rattled me far more than that ever could have.

 

Come to Collinsville and convince the Slayer, not only that the Council wants to kill her, convince her you want to save her because you what? Love her?

 

Take her to bed, give her a cross and some prayers and put your jacket around her shoulders, buy her coffee and tell her everyone is against her then take her hand and tug her out into the night.

 

How dare he hold my hand as we walked back to my house. He was a liar, the worst kind of liar. I wasn’t speaking to him. He didn’t deserve for me to look at him, so I wasn’t looking at him either.

 

“What time is it?” he asked nervously.

 

I didn’t know, I just knew it was late, not midnight yet, that was when the coffee house closed. But the crowd had been thin and the staff had been sweeping the floor.

 

“We have to get you home.” He began to walk faster. “You need to say the prayer.”

 

I pulled back. Oh no, buddy. No incantations to your trumped up, fake relic.

 

“Please believe me.” He actually sounded like it mattered. On a personal level, I guess it did. If he fucked this up the Tribunal would be very, very unhappy with him. No wonder I was his pet project.

 

“Buffy, please.” He stopped walking and was looking into my face.

 

“Ok, fine, how are you going to save me, Spike? Tell me how and maybe I’ll believe you.”

 

“First I’m going to bind you to that cross by having you finish the damned novena.”

 

“So I’m going to say 9 prayers and that will make it all better?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then how?”

 

“I can’t do it alone, I don’t know how.”

 

Well, I guess he wasn’t so smart!

 

“The Council has a plan,” I pointed out, not sure if that was true, Giles hadn’t sounded very hopeful when he’d called.

 

“Yeah, I already told you what their plan is.” He pulled my hand again. “Gotta get you home, Luv.”

 

In that moment, under the street light, him tugging my arm and that tone in his voice, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to believe him or not. The idea that the Council would kill me was hard to take. But the Council’s job was to protect the Slayer line, not me. What Spike said made sense, right down to the fact that he didn’t actually know how he was going to save me.

 

It was an attractive idea that he’d come all the way back to Collinsville because he cared enough to save me. That was a pretty sweet dream for a girl with less than 10 days to live. Handsome mystery guy of her fantasies shows up to save her from not one, but TWO deadly plots.

 

“Please Luv, just do it tonight. What’s one more day going to hurt? You can disbelieve me tomorrow, yeah?”

 

He had a point. Whatever spell he was trying to do involving the crucifix took 9 days. Even if he was working for evil, one more day wouldn’t hurt.

 

So I walked, half jogged, home with him.

 

“Go in, hurry. I’ll wait here.” He motioned to the porch step.

 

“Wait for what?”

 

He looked confused. “For you.”

 

There wasn’t time to argue. I went in. Thank goodness neither my mom or sister was downstairs, but my mother came out of her room the minute she heard me coming up the steps.

 

“Is that you? Are you alone?”

 

“Yes, and yes. We just went out for coffee.”

 

She looked me up and down, lips all thin.

 

“Mom, I’m really tired.” I moved towards my room.

 

“He’s not in there?”

 

“No, I told you, he’s not here. He’s not coming in tonight. I need to--”

 

She held my arm. “I don’t know what’s going on with you two Buffy, but I’m worried. You’ve been a nervous wreck since he showed up.”

 

“I can’t talk about this now.” I yanked my arm free. “It’s not him. OK? It’s not.” But wasn’t it? Now more than ever? “Just leave it.” I went into my room and locked the door.

 

It was ten to midnight. With shaking hands, I lit the candle, took out the pamphlet and got on my knees.

 

After I’d finished praying I knelt looking into the candle flame, hoping I would see something the way I had seen SOMETHING in the coffee clouds, the way I wish I had been able to see something in Spike’s eyes, that would let me know what to believe. This was too much. Even for life at the fissure to Hell, even for the Slayer.

 

My room looked spooky in the light of that one candle. My eye fell on Spike’s lighter. I blew out the candle, picked up the lighter and headed back downstairs. He was waiting for me. I’d check in, assure him I’d said my prayers, and send him on his way.

 

He was sitting on the porch step and rose when I opened the door. “Yeah?” He looked at me expectantly. I nodded. His face still registered concern.

 

“Here.” I held out his lighter.

 

He shook his head. “Hang onto it.”

 

OK, why? Why leave his nice lighter with me and he uses a gas station pocket lighter? Was his lighter wired? Did it have a camera or microphone in it? A tiny bomb?

 

“No really, I don’t need it..”

 

Spike put his hands over mine and stepped up close to me. “We’re in this together.”

 

I nearly laughed out loud. “Not really Spike. As far as I know, no one is trying to kill you.” He must really think I’m an idiot.

 

He brought my hands to his lips, and I’d give him this much, I really did believe that he didn’t want me dead. We were back to “nothing personal” status. The Tribunal sent him here to do a job. It was an unfortunate coincidence that I was the target. Had things gone down differently I believed that he’d have been happy to share my bed a few more times and go on his way, no harm no foul. He didn’t bear me any ill will.

 

Right now that mattered zero amount. Everything he said and did was really just to distract me. The cock and bull intel he supposedly had, was just to confuse me. Telling Giles would just confuse him too.

 

Spike had his lips pressed against my knuckles. OK, maybe he was a little sorry that I was going to die.

 

Spike and I liked each other. As far as vampires and Slayers went, we had a decent working relationship. He probably wouldn’t be throwing his head back in glee while I was sucked into oblivion. Maybe he’d throw back a shot at the bar in my memory. Oh wait, there wouldn’t be a memory. Even better for Spike, he wouldn’t miss me and he’d be guilt free.

 

He looked sad now. Well, it didn’t change anything but it was nice to think at least he wasn’t happy to see me go. We’d had some good times, maybe he’d hoped there would be more of them.

 

I choked up in spite of myself. He didn’t give me that “get over yourself” look this time. He stopped looking sorry for himself and pulled me towards him. He was holding me against him in a way that would be considered comforting if the person doing the holding wasn’t conspiring against me.

 

It was a little bit like it had been with Giles the other night, except even more protective, and with a sort of sexy vibe going on. Less dad/brother and more--No, I wasn’t attracted to Spike like THAT, not now. How could I be?

 

Still, this was the guy who spread the jam on an English muffin for me. Who spreads jam for a person they are conspiring to kill? Everything else I could explain away, but not the damned English muffin.

 

That was the kind of “mine” where someone wants to take care of the other person. These arms around me, felt like they were saying “mine” in that same way.

 

No, no, no brain. Do not let him confuse you. Do not, do not, do not.

 

“What do you think you’re doing?” I pushed away from him when he moved to kiss me.

 

He looked genuinely surprised.

 

“Evil is fixing to suck me into oblivion and you want to KISS ME?” From the look he was giving me, the “get over it” look, clearly he didn’t see any conflict of interest.

 

“If you’ve got 8 days to live, best make the most of it, eh Luv?” And believe it or not, he said that in seriousness. Not a hint of a joke or laugh or sneer or anything.

 

“I’m not sleeping with the enemy.” I stepped back.

 

“Buffy I’m not the enemy.” Then he gave a quick look around, having realized just how loudly he’d said it. “And even if I was, what difference would it make? If the end is coming better to go out shagging than wringing your hands,” he said quietly.

 

Yeah, I saw his point, but better to go out shagging the good guys. Spike’s philosophy was: better go out shagging the handsome, sexy guys. I realized I was still clutching his lighter in my hand. I shoved it into the pocket of his jacket, grabbed my stake, took his jacket off and held it out to him.

 

“Good night Spike.” The arm held out before me was shaking. He stood looking at the jacket, then at me, his jaw was tight. I was waiting for him to say something. He took the jacket, then fished the Bic lighter out of the back pocket of his jeans.

 

“Here.” He gave it to me. “I know I can’t keep you safe. But I think…we can save you.”

 

“I’m tired.” I turned to go in.

 

“Why don’t you believe me?”

 

I just kept walking. I had no answer for him, the fact is, I was starting to believe him.

 

“Tomorrow?”

 

I didn’t answer

 

I never thought of Dawn as perceptive, but when she left the next afternoon she hugged me in a way I don’t think she had before. Maybe it just felt different to me because I knew there was a good chance it was going to be our last hug. We clung to each other for a precious few extra seconds. “I love you, Buffy.” She gave me a real squeeze.

 

My mother was watching us and I could tell she noticed it too. As far as she was concerned, we had a date in a few hours, and she was going to make me fess up about Spike, my nerves, and just what the hell was going on. I hugged my mom too, even though she’d be back soon.

 

I waved them away from the front porch and out of the corner of my eye saw one of Mrs. Abrosia’s cats dash between the bushes on the side of the house. I remembered Spike and I rolling off the roof, hiding behind the shed, scrubbing with laundry soap. I was on the verge of tears. I had good memories, including good memories of HIM. Why did he have to ruin that now, at this stage of the game? Why come back here at all? Ovid didn’t need him, it was fully capable of destroying me on its own.

 

We’d each had a serving of the raspberry cobbler ice cream before Dawn left. I went into the kitchen and put the bowls and spoons into the dishwasher. I needed to decide what to tell Giles. Was there any point in bringing up what Spike said at all?

 

I could tell Giles it was an idea that had come to me all on my lonesome but it never would have. I would never have conceived that the Council would kill me themselves. What was more, it was a good plan. It would work, as long as I did nothing to stop it. As long as no one did anything to stop it. Including Spike.

 

I hadn’t slept well. In spite of everything, I had wanted Spike there beside me. It came to me in the night that he’d made a good point; if I was going to die anyway…if my ass was grass…then what did it matter? What if I let him own me for the next several days? Even if he was only protecting me so he could be the one to hand me over at the end, what difference would it make if I was by his side, in his arms?

 

If these were my last days, not just on earth, but for real…forever…did it matter how I spent them? Out of some sense of duty and allegiance to the Slayer sisterhood, should I stake him and any other vampire I could find on the streets of Collinsville? Should I be spending my nights out at the fissure taking out any baddies that dared to show their face? Should I volunteer at the soup kitchen?

 

I probably should go visit my father.

 

I looked at the clock. I should say my prayers now. I had to be at Giles’s later and there was no way my mother was going to let me go to bed tonight without having it out. If I wanted to make sure I got them in, now was my best bet.

 

OK, so now Spike had me doing it three days in a row. I had lost my mind. I may not completely believe him, but it was clear I didn’t completely not believe him. I picked up the Bic lighter. It took several clicks before I got the candle lit. It seemed strange to be burning a candle during the daylight hours, stranger still to get on my knees.

 

I repeated the words. Then again, and again. I reached out and touched the wood of the crucifix, picked it up and took it to the window to look at it in the Sun. The silver figure was detailed, a gaunt man, his head hanging in death. The jewels that fixed him to the wood weren’t cut into facets they were simply polished and rounded. This was old. Very old.

 

I’m not claiming to be anything like Christ, but for a shadow of a moment I thought I understood just for a flicker of an instant I understood why THIS relic, why THIS prayer.

 

I wouldn’t be doing this for nothing. I wasn’t just a link in the sisterhood of Slayers. I was a link in a chain of those who fought evil, who passed what good they did on to the next generation, and the next. I would never be anything like Christ, but for the barest hint of a second I thought maybe I understood…something. I lifted the crucifix to my lips and kissed it.

 

Saving the Slayer was what mattered, even if that meant letting the Council kill me.

 

************************************


	14. The One That Begins and Ends With Wendy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spike proposes a plan that's SO crazy Wendy thinks it might work.

I knew I couldn’t tell Giles, or Xander that Spike was in town and what he’d told me, they would go all protecto mode. They wouldn’t see past Spike’s being a vampire and working for the Tribunal. Giles wouldn’t see past Spike “defiling” the Slayer, and Xander...yeah, there was no way to even broach the subject of “Spike wants to save me because we’re sort of a couple now.” Not unless I was a hell of a lot more certain that Spike’s intel was legit, was I going to face that gauntlet of doubt.

 

Spike asked if I had a sorcerer, I could do better than that. I had a sorcerer that was also my best friend, and I COULD tell her anything and everything! Wendy could help me sort this out if anyone could. She was a whiz with emotions AND magic!

 

I called her up. “Spike is back in town.”

 

“Uh huh.” She waited for what would come next. Wendy’s the sort of friend who doesn’t jump to conclusions. While she had her own opinion on whether or not Spike was good for me, she was willing to hear me out before she voiced it.

 

“He has some news from the Tribunal, and I really need to talk to you, BEFORE we see Giles.”

 

“Oh, so he’s here on business, not for…you know?”

 

“Well, yeah, kind of both.”

 

“OK, before we see Giles. That gives us 23 minutes.” That wasn’t very much time. Better jump to the chase.

 

“He says the Council is going to kill me.”

 

Wendy didn’t discount it. The more she heard, the more she took it seriously. It was a brilliant plan, and one, by duty, I was obligated to follow.

 

“Not necessarily Buffy. You have the right of refusal.” The longer I was Slayer, the less that felt like a right, and the more it felt like a cop out.

 

“It’s not like they’re giving me a choice. I’m not supposed to know, and if I don’t know, I can’t refuse. And I can’t refuse because this needs to be done.”

 

“Yeah, but if you had a better plan. As long as you fulfill the mission...”

 

“I don’t think I’ll have one in 7 minutes,” I told her.

 

“OMG, 7 minutes!” she squeaked, “I’ve got to go, I’ll see you at Giles’s, and Buffy don’t tell him!”

 

I was SO relieved she said that. It had been too big of a decision to make on my own. Plus, Wendy wasn’t full of confusing hormones and English muffins with jam that might influence her judgment. We spent an hour and a half at Giles looking over the same files, looking for the same loopholes, and the more time that went by without us finding any, the more sense it made that the Council had a plan of its own.

 

Of course, in order to make a plan, you first have to know what the enemy’s plan is. Here’s where you get to exercise YOUR “needs to know” basis and I give you some intel so you can play along!

 

You know that routine you see in cartoons, where there is a long hallway with lots of doors on either side and the cartoon characters are chasing each other and they’re going in and out of all the doors? Dimensional portals are sort of like that.

 

You open your door, enter the portal and open a door to another dimension. Unlike in the cartoons, most of the doors are locked and you have to use sorcery or a password to get in. But at certain times/events, some of the doors unlock on their own, making interdimensional travel much easier.

 

Remember how I told you that different demons/dimensions operate on their own calendar? What constitutes a holiday in one dimension is usually meaningless in another, however, there ARE certain events SO big that they are recognized across dimensional boundaries. When that happens many more of those doors unlock at the same time making interdimensional travel a snap.

 

Two years ago, Ovid had tried to take advantage of a “holiday” that unlocked the doors to several dimensions that it would have been useful to send the Slayer to. At that point, the annihilation portal was closed, but they could have sucked me (or apparently Wesley, if Spike was to be believed) into effective annihilation.

 

This time the holiday was huge! Doors opening and closing all over the place. For a few precious minutes, it would be possible to hop to dimensions that are usually unreachable or can only be unlocked at tremendous cost. If Ovid could grab me during that short window of opportunity, it could send me to any number of dimensions, including actual annihilation.

 

One of the plans Giles and the crew were considering was to send me to another dimension(s). Basically, Buffy running in and out of the doors with big scary Ovid chasing me. Well, actually NOT. Big scary Ovid wouldn’t have to chase me. Ovid has friends behind many doors, meaning they have intel in numerous dimensional portals. If we zap me to another dimension (which we can do) chances are decent that Ovid has intel and they will find me pretty quickly.

 

If they find me and whisk me behind door # infinity x 7, and that’s the end of the Slayer line. It’s also risky because our sorcerer extraordinaire doesn’t have a ton of experience. She could zap me to someplace that I can’t survive or to a place where some nasty is waiting for me, or a place she’d have a hard (impossible) time getting me back from.

 

It wouldn’t be a half-bad plan if the Council was on our side, they have sorcerer resources out the wazoo and would have a better chance of sending me where they want me and finding me afterwards, except it didn’t sound like they’d had much success retrieving Wes, if what Spike said was true.

 

Have I mentioned that the idea of being zapped to another dimension terrifies me? In some ways, it’s scarier than death. Not that I knew what death was like, but still, I felt a whole lot more comfortable going to the human death dimension than into an unknown world where I might never encounter anything like a human ever again.

 

Meanwhile, Ovid would still be looking for me, along with all of their friends. The Council had interdimensional friends too, I just didn’t know where they were, or who I could trust.

 

This upcoming “holiday” was the result of a spatial conjunction of four galaxies resulting in a widespread harmonic resonance. Giles said to think of it as four galaxies doing a square dance when they got close to each other they were going to “spin their partners” and for a few moments, everyone was going to be in synch with each other and connected. This was Ovid’s best shot in several thousands of years for doing away with Slayerage forever.

 

This holiday was going to be the best opportunity for many supernatural phenomena. I was likely not the only one quaking in my boots either out of fear, or excitement. Many displaced beings were going to use this day to travel home after exile or travel someplace new to hide or stir up trouble.

 

That was the information we had at the time. I’m guessing that the Council had a heck of a lot more, but none of it was promising. Maybe the Council could have told me WHY I had to confront Ovid instead of running and hiding in someplace less conducive to snatching me. “Needs to know” basis dictated that they weren’t going to tell me. My job was to fight the fight and trust that they were on my side.

 

Giles guess was that, as bad as ending the Slayer line was, it was possible that Ovid had another nasty plan up its sleeve and if I didn’t arrive as bait at the fissure to confront it, something worse would happen someplace else, either in our dimension or another one that needed to be protected.

 

That would also explain why another top notch Watcher hadn’t been sent to replace Wes. The Council’s energies were divided, they were operating at least two fronts and killing me was the easiest and cheapest way to put this issue on hold for a very long time.

 

Much of what I’m telling you now we didn’t understand at the time. “We”, referring to me and the Collinsville crew. (We didn’t call ourselves the Scooby Gang, we were the Collinsville crew. We were dubbed that by the Council. I wish one of us would have thought of Scooby Gang instead because that is SO much cooler.) Most of what I am telling you we found out later, some of it much later. So imagine me back then with only a fraction of this information, seven days away from D day and reeling from Spike’s new intel.

 

Wendy grabbed me the minute we left Giles’s and wanted me to tell her every single syllable of my discussion with Spike the night before. She was already suspicious of the Council’s behavior, for the same reasons as Spike. It didn’t add up that they weren’t putting more effort and energy into saving the Slayer.

 

Giles, turns out, had similar concerns and questions but had decided not to voice them to me because he didn’t want to upset me any more than I already was, and he had no reason to believe that I’d be able to come up with some mastermind plan, and he was right. That wasn’t my forte. I didn’t understand what it actually took to zap and zing through dimensions, and all that good stuff. It didn’t fall under Buffy’s “needs to know” criteria.

 

“So you think Spike might be right?” I was pretty sure that is what the expression on Wendy’s face was conveying.

 

“I don’t think he’s wrong,” she said.

 

“But why would he want to save the Slayer line? The Tribunal sent him here to mess with me, they WANT the plan to work.”

 

“He saved you before,” she reminded me.

 

“We don’t know if he did that to save me.” I wasn’t falling into the trap that I had been so often warned about. Emotions, they will mess with your mind and heart. Which is exactly why Spike was here because the vampire Tribunal knows that the Slayer’s human emotions are her weak spot. If I bought into some idea that Spike had some kind of feelings for me…

 

“He did it as a joke, on them. He thought it was funny and was sorry he wasn’t there to see their faces.” I translated what he’d said in the least emotional terms I could think of.

 

“Dangerous joke.”

 

“Wacky Vampire. He got into a lot of trouble for it.” Not that it mattered to her. “He got into trouble for that other thing too.”

 

“But he slept with you again.” Wendy wasn’t arguing with me, it might sound like that but she processes out loud, which means asking the same questions and repeating the same ideas over and over.

 

“Hey, let’s get someplace else. Giles might notice that we haven’t exactly driven away.” Especially since Wendy’s car was in his driveway.

 

“Meet me at the coffee shop?” Wendy had a thing for their Chai Tea.

 

“Done.”

 

My mom wouldn’t get home for at least another hour. If I missed my date with her, there would be hell to pay, but I probably had time for coffee, which I was going to need to face the wrath of Mom.

 

We sat at the same table Spike and I had sat the night before, not by coincidence either. Wendy said that having the same location and perspective was likely to make it easier for me to remember details of what had been said, she said that having the same drink might help as well. A latte that I was afraid to drink was, weirdly, a necessary prop.

 

“Should we start at the top again?” I checked.

 

She had out a legal pad where she was charting everything I told her and scribbling down her own reactions to it.

 

I felt nerves rising, knowing I was going to have to dredge it all up. Turns out she was right, being in the same place definitely had a certain kind of déjà vu. My stomach began to churn. Wicked bad tingles started and my toes began to tap nervously, then someone was pulling up a chair. It was Spike. My tingles turned to nausea.

 

He didn’t ask if he could sit down, but he shot me a half apologetic look that meant “I don’t want to interrupt girl’s hour but this couldn’t wait…so, get over it.”

 

“Spike!” Wendy squeaked. (TV Willow has it down to an art) Wendy hadn’t seen him for over three years, and even then she’d never seen much of him. She recognized Spike, mostly because she knew he was back and we’d been discussing him. If she had passed him on the street it’s likely she’d have walked by without registering who he was. Her shock was genuine.

 

He gave her a nod and looked at me with concern. I’m sure he could smell my fear, and sense my nerves. He still wasn’t sure how angry I was with him. Last night had been majorly weird, and for his plan to work he couldn’t afford to alienate me.

 

“You’re a sorcerer right,” he said to Wendy. Now he was all with the fact checking.

 

She nodded.

 

“What do you know about phase shifting?” He wasn’t even looking at me. I guess it didn’t matter if I knew anything about phase shifting, but I felt angry (read jealous) for being left out.

 

Wendy’s frown mostly registers in her forehead rather than her mouth, and her forehead went into major pucker mode.

 

“You know it yeah?”

 

“I know what it is.”

 

“I don’t.” I waved my hand to remind them I was there.

 

Spike scowled at me like I was an annoyance.

 

Wendy stepped in to bring me up to speed. “It’s when you reassign time schedules onto objects or energy. Say instead of sending something to a different dimension, you keep them here but you get them out of step with normal time, then you can only see or interact with them on a cycle where their time frequency and our’s interact. ”

 

I understood all the words she was using. None of them were big and scary, but strung together they weren’t quite making sense. I sort of understood the reassigning time schedules part. I didn’t understand the interaction part.

 

“Can you do it?” Spike asked her, still not paying attention to me, and that was really pissing me off.

 

“I don’t know.” But her head was shaking “no” and her shoulders were shivering in a less than promising shrug.

 

“Try,” he ordered. Just like that in his no nonsense, get with the program, kind of way.

 

She looked at him sort of irritated and a lot confused.

 

He shoved my latte towards her. I guess it didn’t matter since I wasn’t drinking it. “Here, have a go.”

 

Color me confused. Wendy rubbed her palms over her thighs, which I knew had something to do with rubbing off residual energy that would cause static in any spell she was about to work. She was getting lined up to do her thing. I wondered if I should duck out of the way.

 

She closed her eyes, Spike took that moment to look over at me. I shot him a glare, he rolled his eyes and shook his head in irritation. He was so tired of me not believing him, that if we weren’t in a public place I think he would have shaken me.

 

Wendy opened her eyes and looked at Spike. “Which time signature do you want me to use?”

 

“I don’t bloody care, just do it.” Then he thought another moment and said, “Something close to ours, show this one how it works.” He gestured to me.

 

THIS ONE? Now I was THIS ONE? My fury must have shown, I know my face felt red hot. Spike put a hand over mine. It wasn’t a warm loving thing, it was a “be still, she’s doing something important, don’t interrupt.”

 

Wendy’s face went into spell mode. I can’t describe it, it looks like she is concentrating really hard, but you can tell it’s not on anything you can see. Her eyes get all…well, sort of Spike-like. Like she’s seen more and knows more than your average joe. She’s tapping into something beyond what most of us are capable, rather than the collective unconscious, it’s the collective Superconscious. The transcendental, the high knowing.

 

She didn’t touch the latte, her hands first outlined it, then she pulled them back, and for a half of a second, the latte was gone. Then back, and a few seconds later gone, then back but nearer to Spike, then gone, then back where it started. Wendy sighed, shook her head and put her hands down.

 

Spike slapped his hand on the table and looked at me triumphantly.

 

Yey, so we proved Wendy is a budding sorcerer! What exactly did this have to do with me?

 

“She’s told you,” he said to Wendy, referring to everything we’d talked about.

 

She nodded. Did he think that Wendy’s trick had proved his case?

 

He put his hands together as if he was praying and pointed them at me. “This could be it Luv.”

 

Wendy’s forehead creased, then smoothed, then crumpled again.

 

“What?”

 

“You want me to phase shift Buffy?” Whatever the plan was she was starting to grasp it.

 

He nodded.

 

“But they’ll find her? I mean, if she shifted enough to pull her out of cycle with them, it might be years before she got close enough to shift back. They could determine her cycle and grab her at an intersect.”

 

They were talking metaphysics, and I had barely passed regular physics.

 

“That’s the thing. You have to phase shift the Slayer too.”

 

“Separate them...” I could see Wendy was getting this.

 

“They won’t expect--”

 

“Her to be in two places.”

 

“Three.”

 

She looked confused again.

 

“Her body.”

 

Now, I didn’t understand everything they were talking about, but it was sounding a lot like they were going to split me into three pieces and put each one of them into a different time zone.

 

“I can only do one,” Wendy said, voice going all squeaky again. “I don’t even know if I can do that. I mean, this was just a latte, and it was only for a few seconds. We’d need three…”

 

“I know a guy.” The words that signal the start of every shady business dealing ever. Great, the vampire emissary for the Vampire Tribunal “knows a guy” that will help split the Slayer into three pieces and stick me into a holding pattern in time.

 

“You KNOW a guy?” I think I pretty much conveyed my feelings on the issue in those four words. I yanked my hand out from under Spike’s, just for emphasis, in case he missed the part where I was not on board with this scheme.

 

He looked at me with irritation. Clearly, I was nothing but a sticking point in this otherwise beautiful plot.

 

“We need three.” Wendy pointed out.

 

“The Watcher,” Spike said as if it was obvious, as if he thought it would be a simple thing to get Giles on board with this.

 

“The Council won’t expect it,” Wendy and her fact checking. “Ovid won’t expect it.”

 

“Not three,” Spike said.

 

“Probably...”

 

“Take her body first--”

 

“No, they’ll figure out what we’re doing.” Wendy corrected. “Take Buffy first, it will confuse them.”

 

He frowned but nodded.

 

“Then the Slayer.”

 

“It would have to be in an instant before they went after Buffy. Put the Slayer on a long cycle.” Wendy was seeing it in her mind as they spoke.

 

“Then her body.” He went to put his hand over mine again, but I snatched my hand away. He puffed out an irritated sigh.

 

“They won’t worry so much about the body, they don’t need it,” Wendy stated. “But they might take it, just out of spite.”

 

Gulp.

 

“They don’t have much time, they’ll focus on the Slayer.” Spike waved away her concern.

 

“You want me to put her body on slow time?” Wendy asked.

 

“What do you think is best?”

 

“The slower, the fewer chances they have to grab her. You’re right, they’ll focus on the Slayer, that’s the cycle they’ll try to synchronize with. But if it’s too slow…” She and Spike exchanged a look.

 

“Don’t worry about that.” He waved it away.

 

Wendy looked at him suspiciously. I guess if there was any part of me she figured he’d be invested in hanging onto, it would be my body.

 

“We can deal with it,” he assured her.

 

Wendy picked up her tea and broke eye contact with both of us. Spike looked at me, and when I looked away he took my chin and turned my face to him. His look said “you have to believe me.”

 

Vampires don’t actually have a magical thrall, but the old ones have seen and experienced a lot. Their eyes can convey more than most humans can, because they know more. A good vampire actor can convince you of nearly anything if they lock you with their eyes. They can be pretty damn persuasive.

 

I closed my eyes. Nanny nanny boo boo, you can’t control me.

 

He leaned forward and kissed me. Of course I opened my eyes so I could glare at him. He got a solid glare from Wendy as well. His smile told us how pleased he was with himself.

 

“Will this work?” I asked Wendy.

 

iShe cut a glance at Spike, then back to me. “I guess it could.” She wasn’t saying everything that she was thinking but I knew the rest; It could work but it could also be a diabolical plot that Spike could use to help them succeed. It could work, but it could work against us just as successfully as it could work for us.

 

“Then why isn’t the Council doing it?” Ha!

 

“Because killing you is less risky.” He looked at me as if I was a tiny bit slow.

 

Wendy nodded. What Spike said was true. The Council didn’t NEED me. But if it was riskier for them…didn’t that mean it would make it harder for Ovid too?

 

“The Tribunal knows that the Council hasn’t assigned any extra sorcerers to this location,” he was speaking quickly to Wendy. “They won’t expect anything like this. If they consider it a possibility, they will only expect two phase shifts at best. If we bring in a third..”

 

“They won’t be prepared, if nothing else it will buy us time,” she completed the thought. “Can you trust this guy?”

 

“Yeah.” Well, there then. That was a hearty recommendation!

 

I checked the time. “I have to go, I promised my mom…” My untouched latte was sitting on the table, reminiscent of the previous night.

 

“Is it safe to drink?” Again, rather like the night before.

 

Wendy looked confused. “Yes, of course.”

 

“Well, hey, I don’t really know where it’s been.”

 

“It’s been here. We just couldn’t see it.”

 

“And that’s what you’re planning on doing to me?”

 

Spike was standing up.

 

So, if I tasted the latte, and it hadn’t turned into chicken soup or mocha then there was a good chance that I might come back alright too.

 

“It’s cold.” I looked from one to the other. They exchanged that glance again.

 

“What?”

 

“It’s fine.” Spike told me, giving a warning look at Wendy.

 

“OK, what are you not telling me?”

 

“Another time, Luv.” He put his hand on the small of my back and said to Wendy. “Practice yeah? Read everything you can.”

 

“We need Giles,” she stated.

 

“Can you bring him on board?”

 

“This is pretty far out.” Nothing like stating the obvious.

 

He leaned toward her, but not threatening, more like he was pleading. “You know what’s at stake here.” He cut a glance towards me.

 

Wendy looked at the two of us together. Not him or me, but us. A unit, and I could see she was trying to figure us out. If we made sense. She was trying to determine if I was his captive...or something else.

 

“I really have to go…” I stepped out of Spike’s range, but his hand was on my arm in an instant.

 

“I’m coming with.”

 

“Listen, you can’t. My mom knows something serious is going on and she wants to talk to me alone. She’s right, and I promised her.”

 

“I’ll wait outside.” His hand was in the small of my back again.

 

“What, you need a shower?” I guessed.

 

“Yeah, well that too.” He raised an eyebrow at me and I broke out in goosebumps.

 

My mother opened the door the minute she heard my car pull up, she frowned when she saw Spike get out.

 

“He’s not coming in.” I told her before she could protest. He went to sit on the back bumper of the car and pulled out his cigarettes. I walked up to the porch and kissed her cheek.

 

“That’s not going to work,” she told me, closing the door behind us.

 

I put my purse on the coffee table and set my cold latte down as well.

 

When I say cold, I don’t mean lukewarm or room temperature. I’m talking cold cold. Not quite icy, but not far from it.

 

I turned on my mother. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m not even sure what you’re upset about.”

 

“Neither do I, that’s what I want to talk about. I’ve seen you nervous. I’ve seen you scared, but Buffy, I’ve never seen you like this.”

 

“This?” She was going to have to be more specific.

 

“Turmoil. Sad. Weepy. You have candles and a prayer book in your room in front of a crucifix.” She crossed her arms over her chest. I guess I could see her point. And, to put the cherry on top. “And a vampire in your bed.”

 

This was starting to sound like something out of a goth horror film.

 

“Can we go upstairs.” Not that I thought Spike was listening at the door or anything. I just didn’t feel safe down there.

 

She shot a look at the door.

 

I shot a look at the latte.

 

“It has nothing to do with him, I just..can we go to your room?”

 

She marched up the stairs behind me.

 

“Why are you mad?” I asked, feeling safer now that I couldn’t see her face.

 

“If you thought I was keeping something from you, something really important. Wouldn’t you be mad?”

 

She was right. This went beyond privacy. This was in her “needs to know” zone, and I was shutting her out. I was like the Council, withholding information. It wasn’t fair, and it was likely misguided. Was I really trying to protect my mother, or was I trying to protect myself from dealing with her reaction?

 

I went and sat on the edge of her bed, and she came beside me. She took hold of my hand. Yes, she was mad, but that wasn’t the most important thing. This wasn’t about anger, it was about love.

 

“What’s going on?” I’m not sure how she knew, but she reached for the tissue box and put it in my lap.

 

“In a week, you know that thing that got Wes?”

 

She nodded her head. “It’s coming back.”

 

“For you.”

 

“For the Slayer.” I corrected, then realize that she would think I was playing with her, using semantics. “They want to destroy the Slayer lineage, I’m just…a vessel.” I needed that tissue right now.

 

“And you’re scared,” she said, but I could tell from her tone she knew it was more than that.

 

How much should I tell her? Dying wasn’t even the issue, not really. By that time I had accepted that Spike was right. The Council was going to kill me. I wasn’t sure about the rest. After all, in order to help Ovid succeed he only had to foil the Council’s plan.

 

“I don’t think I’ll come back.” I couldn’t say die. I don’t know if I couldn’t say it to myself or to her. “We knew this could happen, that it probably would happen.” I reminded both of us.

 

She was looking at me as if I was out of my mind. I was sitting there telling her I was going to die, and sounding very much like I wasn’t going to do anything to stop it.

 

“No, NO! We didn’t know THIS was going to happen.” She stood up. “This wasn’t going to happen. You were going to beat it. This is bullshit.”

 

“It’s not.” I began to sob, and I guess it was clear that it wasn’t bull shit after all. I wasn’t being dramatic. I wasn’t even being noble, I was somewhere between resigned and despondent.

 

“I’m calling Giles, because this is bullshit.” She was pacing. “I thought it’s the Council’s job to protect you.”

 

Yeah, I SO was not going to tell her the part about the Council’s plan to kill me.

 

“This is bullshit. We’re leaving. Pack your bag, We’re leaving.”

 

“You know I can’t,” I said through my sobs.

 

“Yes you can, and you will. Now, we’re going to go now.”

 

“I’m the Slayer.”

 

“They can find another Slayer. You can refuse. You told me you can refuse.”

 

“I can’t. Not this time”

 

“Well, I can. I DO. I’m still your mother. I didn’t promise anything.” She was weeping, I saw tears, but unlike me, she was angry and mobilized. She hadn’t gotten to the sobbing stage yet, and she was far from resigned.

 

“I have to do this.” I knew it was true, even if I wasn’t exactly sure why. It had something to do with not being able to live with myself, it had something to do with wanting to go out the right way. If I tried to run, the Council might catch me and kill me anyway. This way was better.

 

“I’ll tell them what they can do with their god damned Slayer line.” She leaned down and got in my face. “What have they done to you? How have they convinced you this is the right thing to do? You mean nothing to them, Buffy, you’re a weapon to them but you’re a person, a beautiful person. Let them find another weapon.”

 

“The only way they get another weapon is if I’m dead. I’m the Slayer.”

 

“And why is it that you can’t refuse THAT?” It was a perfectly valid question, one I’d asked many a time, but the Powers That Be had never been forthcoming.

 

There was a knock on the door jamb. Spike was standing there.

 

“You said you’d wait outside,” I said stonily, he had no right to be here.

 

“I heard yelling,” was his explanation.

 

My mother looked at him and looked defeated. He was part of this, that’s all that she knew. His showing up at this moment was him trying to take me away from her. She gave me a look of utter disappointment at my betrayal, that I had chosen HIM over her. That he knew what I’d been hiding from her.

 

“Your mother is right.” He was looking at her when he said it. “It’s bullshit, Buffy.

 

She looked at him, confused.

 

He knelt in front of me. “Why won’t you believe me? It’s bullshit.”

 

“Even HE knows that,” she spat the words out. If even the evil undead knew it was true, how could I be so stupid as to not believe it? Had she forgotten that vampires were on the other side? She grabbed a tissue and was blowing her nose.

 

“We’re going to save you.” He sounded so emphatic. He glanced over to my mother, she wasn’t looking at him, her eyes were fixed on me, but she heard his words.

 

I was tired and defeated. Too much information. Too much exhaustion from trying to do the right thing and not knowing what that was and being told by everyone around me that I was wrong.

 

I was the one in danger. I was the one about to be annihilated, what the hell did they fucking know? What the hell right did they have, to try to take this thing away from me? It was mine. I did the work. I felt the pain.

 

I was sorry for any collateral damage they experienced, I really was, but this was too much.

 

“You think I want this?” I looked from one to the other. Even as I did I felt resentment roll off of my mother that I included Spike in any of this at all.

 

Spike took my face in his hands and forced me to look at him. I closed my eyes and he gave my head a shake. He was having none of this. How dare he, how fucking dare he to waltz in here and think he deserved to have me pay attention to anything he had to say.

 

“Buffy.” His tone was threatening. Who the fuck did he think he was? He had no right. NO RIGHT to ask me to do anything, let alone look at him.

 

I tried to pull my head back but he wouldn’t let go.

 

“Take your hands off of me,” I said through clenched teeth.

 

“Or what? You’ll throw me through a wall? If we’re going to fight let’s take it outside and not destroy your mum’s room.” He was serious, he wasn’t teasing.

 

I think my mother must have put her hand on his arm or shoulder to stop him. “No!” he snapped at her. I could hear the threat in his voice and the power tense in his hands. He let go of my face and grabbed my shoulders.

 

“I warned you of this. This is why Slayers die, because they give up because they believe the Council bullshit that this is all they’re good for... that this is all there is. I told you.” There was definitely a catch in his throat. “You’re more than that.”

 

My eyes shot open. “You told me I was home free once I hit 18 too. Guess you were wrong.”

 

“You’re still here.”

 

I struggled to get free of his grip, but his hands were like vices. I could have broken free. I could have put him through a wall. I seriously considered it. Then I realized that my mother had never seen me fight.

 

“Let me go. I need to blow my nose.” I sounded like a petulant child.

 

He released me.

 

I started talking, “I can fight for Council. I can kill demons, put stakes through things like you” I shot Spike a hateful glance. “But THIS…” I shook my head. “Putting my family through this, my mother. MYSELF.

It’s one thing when I’m fighting some vampire, or demon or two-bit sorcerer with a chemistry set. It’s one thing to go down fighting. But just knowing that no matter what I do they’re done with me. and I’m getting traded in for a newer model. And I can’t even enjoy my last days. I have to pretend it’s all ok. I have to do my part because that’s how it is. I don’t get to enjoy a last meal, a last Sunset.”

 

“No, you don’t, because it’s not going to happen. You have to stop thinking like that. Don’t be their weapon. That’s what I told you. If that is all you think you are, then you’ve given up. They say you’re done and you’re done.” Spike was pleading with me.

 

He didn’t understand, he couldn’t. Spike was in it for himself, I had a sacred duty. “I can’t fight both sides at once. I don’t know how to do that.” I reminded him.

 

“Course you don’t, you’re a good guy, but I’m a con man Buffy, it’s what I do. I play both sides of the game. I’m bound to win at least one of them.”

 

He was honest about how dishonest he was. It almost seemed like a virtue he was so damned good at it.

 

“So you’re playing both sides?”

 

“I’d be playing three sides if you’d let me. You’re the only one that doesn’t want my help.”

 

“Do you really think that’s going to work?” His stupid, ridiculous plan.

 

“Who are you more afraid of, Ovid, the Council or me? If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead already, and I get nothing for handing you over, but if I save you…” He squeezed my knee.

 

I could fight demons, it was always the emotions that clouded my head, wore me out, and tore me up. There was a little tiny smile at the corners of his mouth, a twinkle in his eye, and behind it that smoldering hunger, that spoke to that thing inside me, to the mad animal instinct.

 

He was the only one of the three that didn’t want me dead. He wanted me here another day, to take to bed, to have coffee with, to prepare English muffins for, to borrow novels from, even to play backgammon with my mother.

 

I wasn’t certain if I loved him, but I wanted him, and I wanted the things that we might do together. Spike wasn’t finished with me yet.

 

My odds were no worse if I went with his plan.

 

“I’m scared.”

 

“Makes sense, things are going to get right nasty.”

 

“And I’m tired.”

 

“Then let’s go to bed.” He put out his hand to help me up. I looked over at my mother, tight-lipped like she was holding back a question or a comment. Spike was doing it again, commandeering me right out from under her, and neither she nor I knew if he was really on my side.

 

He let go of my hand so I could hug my mother but took hold of it again almost instantly as if he was afraid I would bolt. “I have to get ready for bed,” I sniffled, letting him know that he was going to have to let go of me at least for a few minutes. He nodded, he looked lost in thought.

 

When I got back from the bathroom he was already in bed. I slipped in. He was naked, like silk against my skin he slid over me. I was exhausted down to my soul, beyond tired.

 

“Spike…” it was a protest or a plea, either way I hoped he would respect it.

 

He put a finger over my lips. “Shhhh.” He kissed my forehead and my eyelids and my cheeks and my lips. I didn’t plan to encourage him, but I felt my mouth opening, and a happy purr of delight come from him.

 

I knew what this was. He was reminding me that I was his, not because I wanted to be, or had planned to be, but because I had said “yes” once, some years ago, and that one invite was still playing out, rolling out like some god damned red carpet to my soul.

 

I made another little sound of protest, he took his lips from mine and said “Shhhh. You don’t have to do anything, Luv. Just let me.”

 

Let him what? This man could be terrifying in his strength and determination. He didn’t take no for an answer and I was too exhausted to want to throw him through a wall.

 

“So I should just lay here and let you have your evil way with me?”

 

“If you believe you’re going to be dead in a week I should think you’d want to have all the sex you could get.”

 

“Especially since I have such a passionate lover.”

 

“Is that what I am?”

 

“Passionate?” That was the most appropriate word I could think of.

 

“Your lover?”

 

“It looks like you are whether I want you to be or not,” I said, as his hands were sliding under my clothes.

 

“True, I’m not as well behaved as the Council. I don’t give you right of refusal.”

 

I guessed he was being sarcastic given the circumstances, clearly, the Council wasn’t asking for my consent.

 

“And if I did try to refuse?”

 

“I’d convince you. Less dangerous than fighting you.” He was kissing my neck.

 

He didn’t lack confidence.

 

It was nice to lay there and feel his hands rolling all over me, then suddenly he stopped.

 

“Buffy!”

 

“What?”

 

“Did you say your prayers?”

 

I broke into giggles. My vampire lover wouldn’t seduce me until I’ve said my prayers. “Yes, I said them this afternoon. More than once actually, Do I get extra points or protection or something?”

 

“I don’t really know.” For some reason, he was laying on his back now and I missed his hands. I had been very much enjoying being convinced. I wiggled against him.

 

“Change your mind after all?” he asked and I could tell by his voice he was smiling.

 

“I like you here,” I admitted.

 

“Do you like me here?” His hand slid into unmentionable places. I wiggled again. “Doesn’t feel like refusal.” Nothing like stating the obvious. “And do you like me here?”

 

I was liking him quite a bit actually. I was extremely helpful when it came time to remove my pajamas.

 

He was behind me doing nice things with his mouth on my neck and shoulders and doing some rearranging of our bottom parts, and I liked it very very much when he slid into me from behind.

 

“Are we ever going to do this with you on top?” I asked, even though the timing was awkward.

 

“Is that what you really want?”

 

“I don’t know. It just seems like--”

 

“Boring?” he suggested.

 

“All the people on TV like it,” I argued, in defense of the missionary position.

 

“That’s cause they’re not allowed to be creative during prime time.”

 

“Is it really boring?”

 

“Doesn’t have to be but it’s not the best.”

 

“Still, I want to—“

 

“I’ll make a deal with you.” And he did something very wonderful with our bottom parts. “When all this is over, and you’re still around…” damn, damn, damn. “We’ll do it your way. Whatever you want.”

 

I felt like I just wanted this, forever, this sleepy haze, and us chatting and him making me feel like I never wanted to be away from him again. I wanted to be pulled up against him, with him filling me up so perfectly until it wasn’t enough and I wanted more and more and more of him.

 

“How could you even THINK…” He drove into me and came, “that I didn’t come back here for you?”

 

You’re never supposed to trust anything a man says in bed, not before, during or after. That’s the rule, right?

 

Why had he talked about “when it was over”? My brain didn’t want to let go of that. When it’s over we’d do whatever I wanted. Was that a reward for good behavior? I doubted he wanted to keep me around for the missionary position.

 

“Get me the tissues, Luv.” He nudged me.

 

“If I move you won’t be in me anymore.” I protested automatically, surprised at the tone of my voice.

 

He chuckled against my neck. “Another minute then.”

 

I was his. My brain wanted to fight it, but every fiber of my body and a decent percentage of my heart wanted to be his. He would protect what was his.

 

As I was falling asleep, I could see his point about wanting to have as much sex as possible if I was going to die soon. It was pretty wonderful.

 

When I woke up, he was having his morning smoke on the roof outside my window. It was time to go downstairs for coffee, tea, and to face my mother. I wondered how we should handle this. I mean, should she take a vacation and we spend extra time together, in case this crazy plan didn’t work? Should I make a list of things to do, places to see and foods to eat? I didn’t have to hide it from her anymore.

 

I was dressing when Spike crawled back in. He kissed me. It was an “I’m happy to see you” kiss, a “you’re mine” kiss. Nothing sensual or suggestive about it. What I’m saying is it was a hard to fake kind of kiss. He did it without thinking about it. I could tell his mind was on something else entirely, I could see the wheels turning behind his eyes. The kiss was automatic.

 

Then I saw what the wheels were turning about. “Put it on.” I tossed a shirt to him. He’d been wondering whether he should dress before he went downstairs. He had his pajama bottoms on but he was bare chested.

 

“That’ll be enough?” he checked.

 

“Are you suddenly shy?”

 

“I need her on my side.” He was pulling the T over his head.

 

I didn’t know what to tell him. I knew my mother didn’t trust him. “Maybe you shouldn’t have barged in last night.” After all, I’d told him to wait outside.

 

“Needed to it was turning into female Bedlam. Someone had to talk sense into you.”

 

“She was trying.”

 

“And failing. Why don’t you trust the people that love you?”

 

“She wanted me to run away,” I pointed out.

 

“Yeah, well, that bit wouldn’t help,” he agreed.

 

I wondered which “people” he was referring to.

 

“You trust your friend, from last night.”

 

“More than anyone or anything.”

 

“More than yourself?” he asked hopefully. He was pretty sure he’d won Wendy over.

 

I nodded. He had me.

 

My mother had the tea kettle heating by the time we got to the kitchen. Spike and I shared a look. Maybe she didn’t like him, or the way he handled me, but apparently she believed he was on our side. Anyone who was telling me not to trust the people who were sending me into Hell with a pea shooter (as Spike put it) was alright in her book.

 

She wouldn’t have felt that way if she knew that his solution was to chop me into three metaphysical pieces and put me out of phase with myself and everything around me.

 

“I have class today,” I announced. Did it make any sense at all to go to class when we had serious planning to do, and I might not be here in 7 days?

 

“What time are you done? We need to meet with your friend.” Spike said as he mixed sugar into his tea.

 

“You think I should go?” I was a little surprised. This phase shift thing sounded like a big deal.

 

“Why wouldn’t you?” my mother piped up.

 

It was more than a challenge, it was a dare. If I said a single word about maybe not being here for the final exam and maybe we should go to the zoo and have a picnic instead, the two of them were going to jump me.

 

She wouldn’t be so convinced Spike knew what he was talking about if she knew the plan and heard that it started with “I know a guy”.

 

Even if I WAS on board with the plan, climbing a mountain or skydiving was a good plan B, just in case julienned Buffy couldn’t be put back together again. Was it so wrong to not want to spend my last days working on a history paper?

 

I pulled out a leftover waffle and popped it into the toaster.

 

“So, are you here for the duration?” Mom turned to Spike. “Live in bodyguard?”

 

“I was hoping.” I was a little surprised he didn’t bat his eyelashes at her, then again, given the circumstances, the bodyguard gig was a stronger argument than “I’d like to bang your daughter as many times as possible before doomsday”.

 

She looked to me and I nodded. “What the hey?” She shrugged. “The more the merrier.”

 

“You think we should talk to Wendy before we see Giles?” I asked Spike.

 

“Definitely, if we don’t have her on board…” He frowned. Saying we were up shit creek if we didn’t have Wendy wasn’t going to encourage my mother. “She can bring him round yeah?”

 

I shook my head. If anyone was going to bring him round, it wasn’t going to be Wendy, it would be me, and to do that, I needed to fully understand the plan. “What about your guy?”

 

“Locked and loaded.” A devilish grin transformed his face. There were probably not too many times in his vamp life he got to say that.

 

“Is someone going to fill me in?” my mom raised her hand like a school kid. “How about we have ME talk to Giles?”

 

“She has a point, few things more convincing than mama bear.” Spike raised his mug to her in emphasis.

 

I munched my waffle. “I don’t think she’d want to sit around and listen to a bunch of boring Slayer stuff.” like the phase shift details.

 

“If it involves my daughter’s life I’ll sit through anything. Look at all the recitals I went to for Dawn.”

 

“Bring her on board,” Spike said.

 

This man was insane. Did he think that when she heard the details she was going to support this plan? He couldn’t have been this hard up to get her approval. This only made me more skeptical of his motives. It was such an over obvious act of goodwill.

 

“She might know something, some detail, anything that could help.”

 

The look she gave Spike told me she found his willingness to include her a bit suspicious too. It didn’t fit with his possessive attitude towards me.

 

“Like mother, like daughter.” he sounded a bit disgusted. “You think I came across the bloody ocean to charm your mum? Even I’m not that diabolical.”

 

We stood in stony silence, a triangular checkmate.

 

“Do you want me to leave? Let you all suss it out? Drop the information into your lap and be on my merry way? Then would you believe me?”

 

I wasn’t sure if that would help or not. If he was here, I could keep my eye on him, but he would also have access to details of our plan. If he was gone it would prove he wasn’t trying to influence us. He wouldn’t be able to change things up at the end...but I would miss him.

 

“You have to explain the crucifix to me first.” Hey, I had the right to test him, didn’t I?

 

His expression inscrutable. “I’ll talk to your Watcher, he’ll tell you what you need to know. He dumped the remainder of his tea down the drain and went upstairs.

 

“What just happened here?” my mother was clearly shocked, “If he can help--”

 

“All he had was information. I don’t think we need him for the rest.”

 

“What about his guy?”

 

“Maybe Giles can find our own guy.” It was likely, Giles must know some sorcerers in the area, someone he knew we could trust.

 

“MAYBE? Do you have time for MAYBE?”

 

“Could we do lunch? We could go to Cazadores, they have the best enchiladas verdes.” Go, Buffy, jonesing for that last meal! “I mean, I still have to eat, right?”

 

I think my mother could smell my fear. She nodded, her eyes looked more shrewd than sad. There wasn’t time to put me in therapy, enchiladas would have to do for now.

 

When I got to my room Spike was stuffing his clothes into a pillow case he’d hijacked from my bed. “Hope you don’t mind.” I shook my head. Tick tock Buffy, what was his leaving proof of? Was this his version of right of refusal? He wasn’t graceful with refusals when it came to sex, but he could negotiate underworld deals with the best of them.

 

“And where do you expect to go on this beautiful Sunny day?” I asked him.

 

“Was hoping you’d bring your Watcher here to talk. I’ll be out of your way at dusk.” He picked up the novel he’d been reading. “If you don’t mind….”

 

“Take it, it’s from last semester.” I hated watching him pack, or stuff as the case may be. I wondered if Giles would be willing to meet with Spike. He didn’t trust Spike, not anymore. Unlike Wendy, Giles didn’t know any of the personal circumstances between us. If he did, it might make him trust Spike less.

 

“Maybe we can set up a phone conference,” I suggested instead.

 

Spike drew a noisy breath. “Right.” he gave a tight smile. “Course he won’t meet with me. I defiled his precious Slayer. I’m capable of anything.”

 

I could tell by the way his hands were fidgeting that he wanted a cigarette. He frowned at the window gauging if it was too bright to go out. I wondered how, in the short time we’d spent together, I had learned to read him that well.

 

When I returned from my shower he was on the roof, crouched in the deepest bit of shadow, head bent, not quite in defeat, but surely in frustrated resignation. He lifted it enough to blow out a thoughtful stream of smoke. His eyes gazed into the distance, planning not his next immediate move, but something in the future, far from here, that didn’t include a stupid Slayer hell bent on dying for a cause that promised no future at all. I could tell his eyes were looking far beyond Collinsville.

 

He closed his eyes and took a long draw on his cigarette as if to cement the deal in his head. He was done here. He’d done what he came for and he wasn’t ever coming back. He milked his cigarette like a man about to stand before a firing squad. I would probably have that same expression on my face at lunch when I was eating enchiladas.

 

He had to know I was there, in my room, near the window, but he kept his eyes on the horizon, or at least as much of it as he could see through the tree branches and utility lines. He wasn’t planning to come back in. He sure as hell wasn’t going to say goodbye.

 

Spike wasn’t angry, just finished. Released from duty. I wondered if he’d go back to the Tribunal and take his next assignment, or was he done with them as well?

 

I dressed, fixed my hair, put on makeup. If he didn’t come in soon the Sun was going to get him. I looked at the clock, I couldn’t play the waiting game to see what he did, I had to get to campus.

 

“Spike?” I stuck my head out the window.

 

“Slayer.” He didn’t look at me, but worse, he hadn’t used my name.

 

“I could have Giles call.”

 

“No need, really. Your friend knows enough.” He crushed his cigarette out on the shingle and flicked the butt into the gutter. He wasn’t one to look back. I was what was behind now.

 

I couldn’t bear for this to be goodbye. I had set this in motion, sure he wasn’t going to call my bluff. But maybe it was for the best. I hated him in that moment. It wasn’t fair for him to do this. I was upset, my life was on the line. Didn’t he know better than to take a half hysterical woman seriously? I guess I’d never get that missionary position out of him.

 

I imagined what I could say to him to make him stay. Maybe just “stay”. Maybe the whole “Spike I was wrong, what was I thinking?” and throw myself into his arms. Hard thing to do on a porch roof.

 

“Best get to class then,” he dismissed me.

 

My head hurt, but it felt more like a broken heart than a migraine. I didn’t have time to make more coffee, on my way out I grabbed my latte from the night before and gulped it. Other than being cold, it tasted fine.

 

At lunch, I asked my mother if she’d seen Spike. He’d told her goodbye when she left for work, and for her to “Trust the girl, not the Watcher.”

 

“I’m surprised you let him go,” she told me, mixing her rice and refried beans together. “And I’m surprised he went.”

 

I shrugged, “He’s not gone yet, don’t count your chickens until we get home tonight.”

 

She shook her head. “I’m pretty sure he’ll be gone.”

 

“You could have asked him to stay.”

 

She gave a snort. “He was here for you. If you didn’t want him, there was no point in him staying.”

 

I pushed my plate away. “I don’t have time to worry about him.”

 

“Was this a lover’s quarrel?” She just had to ask that, of course.

 

“I just don’t know if I can trust him.”

 

She gave me a look. Not trust him? She didn’t believe me.

 

My mom grabbed the check and I gave her a kiss. “We’re meeting at Giles’s at 4, you can come straight from work?”

 

She nodded.“I’ll get off early, don’t start without me.”

 

I sat in my car for a minute wondering what to do next. I had about three hours before we met with Giles. I hadn’t done my prayers. (Yes, I was going to keep up with them) I could still take that stroll through the zoo. I could go to the park and put my feet in the stream. I could put on my bikini and lay in the Sun. I could go home and see if Spike was still there. There was really only one choice that made sense.

 

I unlocked the door and willed myself to feel if there was a presence in my house. One of the earliest parts of my training had been learning how to extend my senses to pick up subtle cues. Mostly it had become second nature, but there were times when I purposely put myself into the zone when it was critical or someone was hard to read.

 

I didn’t feel anything, but it was bright out, he had to be here, right? Then I remembered he knew a guy. Spike could probably manage not to incinerate until nightfall. He was nothing if not resourceful. I’m sure he knew more than one guy.

 

There was a long note on my bed, in neat script, halfway between cursive and print. There wasn’t a single personal line in it. Just facts. I looked to my bedside table. I thought maybe he’d have left something for me. Nothing. Not his lighter, not fresh candles to replace the ones that were getting short. There was a line at the end of the note. The crucifix can bring her back.

 

He left the number of his guy. That’s how he labeled it. “my guy”.

 

We met at Giles’s, and my mother was remarkably calm as Wendy explained what she knew, what she’d learned from research. She thought we should take Spike’s intel seriously. My mother seconded that. Giles, understandably, was skeptical, though he didn’t look all that surprised when Willow said it was probable that the Council planned to kill me. He did his face crumple thing. “I admit that the plan makes sense.” It was hard to find holes in it. “But coming from Spike, of course, I can’t help but be suspect.”

 

“He’s gone, Giles. He won’t know the time signatures.”

 

“He could still tell Ovid the plan, and they would know what to target.”

 

“You could split her into four pieces,” my mother suggested. Way to go to support the cause, Mom!

 

“We’d need yet another sorcerer skilled enough to do phase shifting, dear lord, I don’t even know if we can handle something of this scope.” Giles was paler than I’d ever seen him.

 

“You have Spike’s guy,” My mother reminded him.

 

“I don’t think it’s wise to include him.”

 

“Spike wants to save her.” My mom might not have trusted his motives, but she trusted that no matter what his intentions, keeping me for himself was a priority.

 

“Yes, but he left didn’t he?”

 

“He said the Tribunal sent him here to rattle my cage.” I left out the rapey part. “Mission accomplished.” I felt like I was going to puke.

 

Damn him. Damn him. Consider me rattled. Consider me robbed of any shred of satisfaction I might have gotten by scratching something off my bucket list.

 

I asked Wendy to stay the night. I didn’t want to be alone. Before we went to bed, she examined the crucifix, and the pamphlet, and then the crucifix once more.

 

“Did Spike say this would protect you?” She was vigilant in her fact checking.

 

“He said it would bring me back.” I nearly had the note memorized even though I’d only read it twice.

 

She looked solemn. Very solemn. She cut me a worried glance then hugged me.

 

“OK, and this means?..” I pressed her.

 

“Did he say he was here to protect you?”

 

I didn’t have the presence of mind to play semantics.

 

“He said he was going to save me.” I managed half an eye roll.

 

“Why did you tell him to leave?” Not a judgment, just Wendy, seeking more facts.

 

“I didn’t. He offered and I didn’t tell him to stay.” Now who was playing semantics? I didn’t know how to explain that his willingness to leave proved that this wasn’t just a mission to him. He had come for me. He left when I told him to. If he was here for himself or the Tribunal he wouldn’t have left without a fight.

 

Wendy put her hands to her temples for several moments.

 

“What is it?”

 

“I wish I could have talked to him again. I think there was something missing.”

 

Oh boy, had I gone and blown it?

 

“What? What kind of something missing?”

 

She looked at me like she was deciding if this fit the “needs to know” basis and then gave a shudder like “no duh.”

 

“The Council isn’t going to kill you, Buffy, we are.”

 

“And we’re going to use this,” she held up the crucifix, “to bring you back.”

 

Oh boy, and I hadn’t said my prayers yet.

 

Wendy’s forehead did some wacky gymnastics.“I think we should call Spike’s guy.”

 

***************************

 

Q&A

 

Buffy how old are you? I mean right now, writing this.

Now, now...you’re NEVER supposed to ask a woman over 21 her age! It could be considered a spoiler. And it definitely would if I end up writing a sequel so….I’ll have to exercise my right of refusal. Sorry.

 

Also is your real name just Buffy like in the show, or is it Elisabeth?

Wow, Asking the hard questions today. Funny how something as simple and straightforward as this is way harder for me to respond to than something dealing with the supernatural. 

Can I just cop out and say it’s Buffy? That’s pretty much what I did at the beginning of the book. I also added the caveat that some names etc have been changed for privacy reasons, so...wondering if I should break cover (Because people can find out ANYTHING on you if they have your real name) or not.

Telling the story of my name is also going to date me, so double ugh.

The truth is I have been called Buffy for much of my life. When I was a little girl there was a character (blonde and adorable just like me) on a popular television show, and her name was Buffy. So, my father did call me Buffy, or Buffyboodles a lot of the time. (like I mentioned at the start of this book).

The name on my birth certificate is actually Summer. My parents named their girls Summer and Dawn. My middle name is Evelyn, so I was Summer Eve, and my sister is Dawn Dailey or Dawn Day for short.

When I was in middle school the Preppy movement rose and all the kids were taking ridiculous nicknames like Tip, Muffy, Chip and Pansy...Summer was way too “California” and even though I LIVED in California, my father was in “business” and we had a bit of money so I hung more with the preppies and less with the hippies, and I went back to using my childhood nickname of Buffy.

In high school, people really did call me Buffy...but over time it sounded more and more silly and out of style and as an adult, I go by my given name, Summer.


	15. The One Where I Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy faces the Biggest Bad and dies, but you can't keep a Slayer down.

The One Where I Die

 

“Don’t we need to know HOW the Council plans to kill me, you know, so we can get the jump on them?” I didn’t want to interrupt the brainstorming session on phase shifting but no matter how clever our plan was if the Council took me out first, it was all a wash.

 

“Do you think they’ll have someone on site?” Wendy turned to Giles, he would know the mind of the Council better than anyone. He dithered a moment. The Watcher who would have known the answer to that question was gone. The Watcher who would have known the answer to that question, wouldn’t have shared the answer.

 

I wondered if Giles was trying to cover for the Council, and I wanted him to know it wasn’t necessary. “Come on, I can’t be the first Slayer they took out. Maybe they never got caught at it, but you know it had to have happened.”

 

“It’s highly possible they had Watchers do it,” Giles said. “It’s not out of reason. In fact, it’s likely that the very Watchers they send as auxiliary support may have had another mission entirely.”

 

“But they haven’t sent another Watcher. They haven’t sent anyone, and besides, it’s too risky, isn’t it? The timing is so critical.”

 

Giles had taken the same vow Wes had. Maybe after he’d said he had no intention of letting them take me, he’d silently added: “in vain”.

 

“Do you think SPIKE is working for the Council? It’s possible right?” Wendy said. There was no conviction in her tone, but we were running out of ideas.

 

This was an even bigger mind fuck than the idea of Spike working for the Tribunal and side jobbing for Ovid, but he had said he wasn’t above playing for three sides if that is what needed to be done.

 

Maybe the Council would kill me, maybe Giles, maybe Spike, maybe the phase shift itself, and let’s not forget Ovid!

 

I put my head between my knees and I began to rock. No one said anything about it. I think they pretty much all wanted to assume the same position but knew it would be bad for morale.

 

“You know what? I’m going to the zoo.” I decided. I turned back to look at them once I neared the door. “And later we can draw straws about who gets to kill me!”

 

………………

 

Looking back, it’s amazing how quickly Giles and Xander accepted Spike’s intel and his proposed plan. It’s true that desperate times lead to desperate measures, and the plan did have a certain kind of zany logic.

 

The saying goes “fight fire with fire” but that’s actually not such a great idea, it’s much better to fight fire with water, or to throw dirt on it, or that sticky foam the fire department uses. In our case that translated to not trying to out dimension hop Ovid, by dimension-hopping of our own, but to throw a big wet blanket on Ovid’s plan by giving them nothing to dimension hop.

 

We were taking me out of the picture, by hiding me between the ticks and tocks that we use to mark time.

 

The easiest way I can think of, to explain how the time signatures operate, is to have you imagine three people in a dark room with flashlights. One flashes theirs very quickly, another more slowly, a third only turns theirs on once a day. Given enough time, eventually, all the flashlights will flash at the same time. The two that are going more quickly will flash in sync more often than they will with the once a week flashlight.

 

The times when they flash together all the parts are in sync and the people are visible to each other, then off go the flashlights and they are invisible to each other once again. While it’s dark, they can move around and do things that the others can’t see, and when they show up again, they may be in different locations than they were at the previous flash.

 

That was how we were going to confuse Ovid. It wouldn’t know when or where to look for the Slayer, and just when it thought it figured out where she was, she would be in an entirely different place when she appeared again.

 

First, we were sending my Buffyness (my mind/personality) into a flicker, where I was interacting with this reality on such a fluttering time schedule that it would be hard to snatch me.

 

While Ovid was saying “Hey, where did she go?” the team was going to immediately send the Slayer aspect of me into a different time signature, a much slower one, giving Ovid less of an opportunity to make a grab for her.

 

To keep Ovid from making off with my body, the team planned to put it on a very slow beat. Ovid was unlikely to waste time waiting around for a body it didn’t need when there was a Slayer to chase through time.

 

In the TV episode “Dead Things” when you see Katrina phasing in and out, and in the episode “Life Serial” when Buffy is on campus and things are speeding up then slowing down all around her, those are examples of phase shifting.

 

A body can’t survive long without an animating presence. (unless it’s on life support) Splitting “me” into three pieces meant taking my essence out of my body, and taking the Slayer out of my body, leaving the body to fend for itself. If a body hasn’t lost its blood and hasn’t been dead for very long it can sometimes be revived. The team hoped that putting the body on a slow time signature would “keep” the body revivable for a longer period of time than if it was sped up. It’s like turning the computer on sleep mode to save the battery.

 

We had a vague idea of how long my body could survive minus my Buffyness, it was less clear what would happen to my Buffyness when it was minus my body.

 

Since I was being forced from the body before the body actually died, I wouldn’t be fast tracked to the human death dimension, instead, I would be having an out of body experience. In most self-induced out of body experiences, a person’s spirit remains tethered to their body via an elastic silver cord allowing them to zap home when they want to. I wasn’t going to have that cord. Getting me back wasn’t going to be as easy as Dorothy in Oz tapping her heels together and repeating “there’s no place like home”.

 

Splitting me up should confuse Ovid, after all, it was confusing the hell out of us and we were the ones who came up with the plan!

 

The times when I sat listening to Wendy and Giles talk phase shifting I felt like I was watching a comedy routine where the guy says to his boss, “You can’t fire me, I quit!” and the boss says “You can’t quit, you’re fired!” and everyone is so busy laughing they ignore the fact that the guy doesn’t have a job anymore and his bills aren’t getting paid anytime soon.

 

I was going to be just as dead, no matter who killed me. 

 

That afternoon, I went to the zoo and got myself a big orange soda. I was totally channeling Buffy age 7. I bought a hot dog. (I don’t eat hotdogs, I just wanted to smell it) I rode the tram and watched the polar bear swim.

 

I was mostly numb at the zoo, consciously thinking that this was the last tapir I was ever going to see, saying a polite, but tearless, goodbye to the peacocks and the pony at the petting zoo. I got burped at by a sea lion and thought how odd it was that I’d never really considered that animals have lives just as real to them as ours are to us. They burp and sleep and dream and get scared and die just like we do, and, for the most part, no one remembers they ever existed. I went into major meltdown at the sea lion exhibit, unsure if I was crying for myself or for the glassy-eyed herring the sea lions were thoughtlessly wolfing down.

 

Sometimes, out of a nowhere, the feelings would hit me like a roundhouse kick to the kidney. (I hope you don’t know what that actually feels like) It wasn’t terror I felt, it was profound sadness, and for some reason, sadness seemed to settle in my kidneys. Nerves churned my stomach, love broke my heart, sadness seized my kidneys and I doubled over in pain.

 

Meanwhile, Wendy went to see the sorcerer also known as “Spike’s Guy”. 

 

Spike’s guy (Oscar) turned out to be the sorcerer Giles would have called in as a third even if Spike had never mentioned him. Like Spike, Oscar wasn’t particular of the company he kept, but he was his own man, not a puppet. Giles respected his skill and knew he was trustworthy. If Oscar agreed to help us, he would follow through.

 

Do you remember Rack in S6? He’s the scary witch guy who ran a cloaked magic/crack den where Willow got her rocks off? Spike’s guy was kind of like that, except Oscar wasn’t so much with the drugs or the use of sorcery for recreational purposes. He did deal in some questionable business, but his place wasn’t run down and skeezy like the one on the show.

 

Wendy went to see him, and when she passed into the waiting area (pass, as in walked through the wall) she recognized someone sitting there, feet up, reading a book. Turned out Spike hadn’t left town, after all, he’d just dropped out of sight. He was checking in with Oscar to see if the crew had contacted him. Wendy’s arrival pretty much answered that question.

 

Spike didn’t come back into the fold. We didn’t actually NEED him, and he showed no interest in being part of the confrontation itself. He wanted to know how I was holding up and how my mother was doing. Spike told Wendy he was going to hang around to find out how things ended. Whatever else they talked about, and I’m certain they did talk, Wendy never divulged.

 

She called me that evening and told me she’d seen him. I was relieved that he was still around. It meant he wasn’t harboring any bad feelings. He’d left because it seemed like that was what I needed, but he hadn’t taken insult and he hadn’t gotten pissed off about it.

 

Yet again, he was giving me time to work my shit out, the problem was I was running short on time. I probably wasn’t going to get over myself in time for him to not say “I told you so”, and take me to bed like nothing ever happened.

 

I thought it would be cool if Wendy could phase shift Spike, so while I was flashing in and out of existence he and I might bump into each other and put this behind us. I wanted this behind us, but until it was truly over, I couldn’t afford to see him. I’d already “lost him”, but I might not be willing to lose him again. Another night in Spike’s arms and I might just run from this whole damn thing.

 

Our last night together had been quite lovely. The other times we’d had sex he’d gotten off quickly, and it was only afterward that his hands roamed over my body, memorizing me, taking their time. But the last night, they’d wandered first, pleasuring places that had become familiar to him, conveying the message “I know you” and not merely “I want you”.

 

It was enough to know that if I wanted Spike back, all I had to do was talk to his guy.

 

Following through on our new “Mom needs to know” policy, I told my mother that Spike was still in town. She got the idea that he might be lurking about watching us, like a creepy but friendly stalker. I knew better. Spike was either in or out. The only time he would stalk anyone was if he was actually hunting them. He was much more likely to call Wendy and ask how things were progressing than he was to peek in my bedroom window. I told Mom as much, and based on what she knew of him she accepted it.

...............................

 

Really smart people sometimes overlook the simple things because they are so focused on the complicated and diabolical. I had a crack crew, Wendy with the fact checking, Giles with the plan making, both of them with the phase shifting, and Xander with the down to earth practicality that only an actual down to earth practical guy can have. When you have no magic powers, super powers or technical wizardry, your talent for the gentle and obvious is apparently increased.

 

57 hours before show time, Xander made the brilliant suggestion that the tracer the Council had so generously fitted me with, was quite possibly carrying something that could take me out with a press of a button.

 

If the tracer was suddenly removed, and no longer going about Buffy’s usual business, the Council would notice. We couldn’t risk drawing suspicion when they still had time to activate a plan B. Oscar knew a guy (not surprisingly) who knew a vet who sewed up bad guys when they got shot or stabbed by other bad guys.

 

The vet surgeon suggested we not remove the tracer, but instead, place it somewhere closer to the surface under a few easy to loosen stitches so I could yank it out at the last minute.

 

We didn’t explain any of the magic mojo with him, he just knew a thing or two about how bad guys and bad guy electronics operated. While he was very painfully extracting the tracer from deep in my shoulder and placing it less deep in my shoulder, I thought to myself how Spike would likely have figured out the tracer thing a lot sooner than we did. It really is an asset to have a bad guy on your good guy team.

 

There was zero way to be comfortable with tracer, wire pull, and stitches in my shoulder. Due to enhanced Slayer healing (even if it isn’t as fast as on TV) I had to make sure the wound didn’t heal over by constantly reopening the cut. There is nothing glamorous about being the Slayer, ZERO. No privacy, lots of pain and lots of gross, yucky stuff.

 

Xander was, out of all of us, the most and least Spike-like. He was practical and stepped up to address whatever came along in a calm sensible manner. But Xander lacked Spike’s confidence and unlike Spike, Xander has a conscience. Spike knew the difference between good and evil, he just didn’t much care. He did what was expedient, unhampered by any moral handwringing.

 

Spike recognized that other people needed to convince themselves they were doing the right thing (even if they weren’t). He respected that, but sometimes he had to do it from a distance because he ran out of patience. His leaving, during this episode, was an example of that. He couldn’t be patient with my process. He was too invested.

 

He knew I had to do things my way, and the only way for him to deal with it was to leave me to it. My sense of duty wouldn’t allow me to believe a vampire when he said: “Screw the Council.” I had to protest as a matter of principle. When Wendy and Giles said “Screw the Council” I could move forward.

 

Laying in my bed at night, wincing in discomfort at the wound, wire, and stitches, I imagined Spike was there, with his calm sense of purpose. He was just as comfortable humming me lullabies as he was making love or spreading jam on muffins.

 

Everyone around me was remaining remarkably level-headed, which was great, but I wanted something beyond level headed. I wanted Spike’s contagious sense of well-being. I wanted to be sucked into the frame of mind where spending my nights shagging (after saying my prayers, of course) was the most sensible way of addressing my crazy situation.

 

I had said the prayers for nine days, just as Spike and the pamphlet instructed. I was disappointed when the ninth night came and went and the crucifix hadn’t begun to glow, sing or levitate. It just sat there. Now what?

 

I crawled into my bed and it felt emptier than it ever had as if finishing the novena somehow ended things between Spike and I as well. He brought the crucifix, the prayer, and the instructions and now it was done. No genie in the lamp, no prosthetic leg in a box, and no Spike in the bed. I left my window open, hoping he would blow in. I knew he wouldn’t but I had to do it anyway, or I would always wonder.

 

My bed was too lonely, and no matter how hard I wracked my brain I couldn’t think of the tune to the lullaby he’d hummed for me. Like a little girl woken by a nightmare, I went down the hall to my mother’s room and crawled into her bed. She smoothed my hair and kissed my forehead. She asked if there was anything I needed. We shared a hysterical giggle over the absurdity of that question, then we cuddled together and went to sleep.

………………..

 

Have you ever had the wind knocked out of you, or been hit by a truck? Have you ever had a limb torn off? Have you ever had a sinus headache so bad that you wanted to take an ax to your head to relieve the pressure?

 

I’m trying to think of things to compare my experience to, and I think it’s far more likely that you’ve suffered one of those things than that you’ve been split into thirds and phase shifted.

 

I can’t tell you about the epic battle at the fissure because I wasn’t there for most of it. The plan was to get us all to the site, rip the tracer out of me and attach it to Xander (brave, foolish, amazing friend) then have the sorcerers do their time warp thing.

 

One moment I was jumping into battle swinging 50 lbs of enchanted sword, the next moment all my Slayer strength and instincts were gone. I hadn’t been without those powers for nearly five years. They were so integrated with who I was, that I wasn’t fully aware of what they were until they were not.

 

I believe my exact words were, “Oh shit.” Then came the part that felt like I’d been hit by a truck, as Wendy’s spell slammed into Buffy with enough force to send her wheeling through time.

 

There was an enormous pressure in my head, so much pressure that it should have exploded. I wanted it to explode because that had to hurt less than the way I felt. Finally, something exploded and I turned into confetti. Maybe you’ve been to a concert where they shoot the confetti out of a cannon and it starts fluttering down and flashing in the light. That was how it felt to have the Buffy part of me phase shifted.

 

They sped the Buffy part of me up. Earth time was like a strobe. I saw the battle in slow motion freeze frame. My body had been shifted to a slow time schedule and was only occasionally present, I caught a glimpse of it every so often. My body was bruised and lifeless, and my mind was spinning and fragmented and couldn’t hold a coherent thought. I didn’t want to watch, but I couldn’t close my eyes because I wasn’t in my body.

 

I saw what appeared to be an explosion, even though I was very close, the flames didn’t burn me or tear me. It was the device meant to kill me, detonating. I saw Xander, but I couldn’t scream. He grinned and I was so grateful he could see me, then I realized he wasn’t seeing me. He was seeing the spot where I wasn’t, now engulfed in flames. He had gotten the tracer off in time. He was fine.

 

All I wanted was my mother, and I got a distinct feeling she was present then no, not a feeling I SAW her. She was sitting on the edge of my bed, a glass of wine on my bedside table. She was holding the crucifix and praying. Her hands shook as she held the pamphlet. She rocked forward and backward a little as she prayed, just the way I did when I was nervous. I hadn’t ever realized we shared that habit.

 

In a flash, she was gone, then back, then gone, then back, then…I felt guilty, I should be with the crew, at the battle, but I wanted to stay with my mother. I wanted to tell her I was there but I was fluttering and sparkling too fast, too dizzy, too sick.

 

But now I realized that I could go places! As soon as I thought of a place, I was there, only in flickering, fluttering spurts. I shot to the Council headquarters. There was confusion, they thought they’d gotten me, but readings were unclear. They registered that there had been an explosion but their sorcerers couldn’t detect the Slayer. The place was in mild hysteria.

 

I thought I should go back to the battle, I thought I should go pray with my mother. I wanted to see my sister, but I didn’t know where she was. I flickered to LA, to my dad’s apartment, but she wasn’t there. I felt sick and I wanted to be with Spike, but I didn’t’ know where Spike was. I just knew that if anyone could stop my flickering, it would be him.

 

I returned to the fissure and it was calm. Well, ok there was some fire and brimstone (which is actually pretty damn scary) but I guess I was so used to it that it no longer registered as anything to worry about.

 

Xander was sitting on the rocks at the edge of the fissure. Giles was checking his watch. Spike’s guy was in a car in the high school lot in something like a trance. He was the one phase shifting the Slayer, on a slow, slow vibration. Only someone with years of skill and meditation practice could hold her in place. The Slayer has supernatural powers, shifting her wasn’t as simple as cooling down a latte.

 

I understood that we were waiting on the Slayer, but where the hell was my body? It seemed like I was waiting beside Xander for 1000 years before I caught sight of it. Then it was lost again. I shot back to my bedroom.

 

My mother was drinking the wine now, the crucifix lay on my bed. She was at the window looking out at nothing, her eyes on at the same meaningless horizon that Spike had been gazing at the last time I saw him.

 

Ovid’s window of opportunity had lasted only minutes, yet it seemed many hours had passed by. My mind raced back to the fissure. I caught a glimpse of my body! Why had Xander tackled me? Why was the color gone out of Giles's face? Then my body was gone again, for what felt like another thousand years.

 

For one wicked instant I thought I was back. Body, Buffy, Slayer. We weren’t together yet, but they were near enough that I could sense them. I felt a surge of relief and then terrified as I began hurtling away from my body once more. I tried to grab it with my astral hand, but I passed right through, I reached for the Slayer with one hand and almost touched her before I felt myself being torn apart limb from limb. I was confetti again.

 

I’d had enough. I wanted to go far away. Far enough away that the limb ripping and confetti cannon would never happen again. Far from my dead body, farther still from the Slayer. After all, if it wasn’t for her, none of this would be happening!

 

I could go anywhere I wanted so I plunged to the bottom of the sea. It was cold there...dense, and dark. The pressure of the sea forced confetti me back together. There was no pain, and the flickering stopped. I was going to stay there. Forever. Maybe, I would leave every once in awhile to check on my mother, but for the rest of eternity, I was going to stay in this impossibly cold, loud place.

 

The dark salty water had seeped into every pore of my astral body, filled my ghostly lungs. I was drowned, but it felt good, right instead of wrong. The breath that had been knocked out was now replaced by the cold, hard, loud, pressure of the dark dense sea.

 

I wasn’t going back. Not up there. Not where that Slayer was. Not where that dead body occasionally showed up. Not where I was nothing but dizzy, useless, drifting glitter. I was never ever leaving this cold dark place. It was the only thing I could trust, the only thing that wasn’t changing and loose and slippery.

 

We’d known that my body was going to die. Unfortunately, Giles had lost the time signature and it took him “quite a long time” to find it again and to pull my body back into the present time zone.

 

In his effort to synch with my body, it had been sent pulsating through an astounding number of time signatures and was somewhat worse for wear. Think jet lag x 1000, and a lot of bruising from landing repeatedly in different places. It was horribly dehydrated and ice cold. (much colder than my latte) They had kept my body out of phase for too long and without the ability to take care of itself it was like roughly handled luggage at the airport.

 

I didn’t know this or care because I had decided to take up residence at bottom of the sea, which was just as well seeing as my body was not only dead but inhospitable.

 

Having identified my body’s time signature Giles realized that he’d better keep my body in slow repeat, to keep its need for oxygen low, or it was going to be impossible to revive it. My body was only interfacing with their reality once every several minutes which made transporting it quite difficult. They’d move me a few feet, then I would disappear again.

 

My mom says it was disconcerting, once they finally got my body home, to watch it disappear every few minutes and reappear in a slightly different location. She had to keep inching me back onto the bed because each time I reappeared I would be a few inches over diagonally and floating two or three inches above the bed.

 

Each time I reappeared I was colder and deader. They had to find Buffy.

 

Inexperienced as we were, Wendy didn’t realize that I could find a way to phase shift myself out of the time signature she’d assigned me. Flickering was just too damn uncomfortable, so I went to a place where the pressure and cold were literally great enough to have a metaphysical effect. She was trying to find me in the land of flashing lights and I had taken myself to a time signature that was much closer to the slow pulse of the earth itself.

 

What Wendy couldn’t do, the Slayer could. She found me and smacked back into me so hard, I felt like I’d just had a pillow shoved down my throat. Suddenly, the once calming pressure of the sea was too much. The Slayer was anxious to get me home and began fighting and struggling towards the surface. I tried to stop her, but she was too damn strong and determined.

 

She ended up dragging me along behind her like a horse dragging someone with their foot stuck in a stirrup. I tried to slow us down. We were surfacing too quickly. I panicked, terrified of going to pieces again. That’s when I got hit with the metaphysical bends. The pressure that had been holding me together was now being decreased too quickly and all the time I’d lost began to rush back into me, over me, and through me.

 

I hated that fucking Slayer bitch. She was trying to take us home. But I didn’t want to go. My flickering self heard bells ringing. Council phones were ringing off the wall. My mother's phone was ringing, Giles's phone was ringing.

 

Where is the Slayer? WHERE is the Slayer? They were all looking for the Slayer. Spike’s guy told them he didn’t know. He’d brought the Slayer back to the current time signature. She was here, she just wasn’t going back into the body. None of them knew she was wrestling with me, and I was still flickering, and flittering and sick.

 

Slayer strength is no joke, and the Slayer does have the power to deal with the supernatural. She had no problem holding onto my ghostly flickering body no matter how hard I struggled to get free. She forced the bits of me back into a whole and she dragged me home by my ear like an angry mother dealing with a teen who stayed out past curfew.

 

Then, like I had done so many times in my life, she climbed up the tree, onto the roof and in through my bedroom window.

 

Someone had called a priest. My family wasn’t Catholic, but we did have one of the most powerful relics of the Catholic church, and I had been praying the novena. Even my mother had been praying. My body had been returned to its normal time signature, so the priest wouldn’t think he had been called in for an exorcism, what with the body pulsing into and out of view. I watched as he murmured some words and anointed my body with oil.The priest picked up the crucifix, kissed it and wrapped my hands around it, and together he, my mother, my Watcher, Xander, Wendy and even Spike’s guy…prayed.

 

I was dimly aware that I should be praying too, I knew the prayer to the crucifix in Latin, it wasn’t the same prayer they were using, but I didn’t think that would matter. I tried to collect my mind, but I couldn’t with the Slayer tugging at me, I couldn’t get on my knees, couldn’t fold my hands or bow my head..

 

That was the last thing I remember before the body on the bed began to seize. It shuddered and shivered and its pulse raced for a moment, then it was still again, but alive.

 

I was home but I was sick and dizzy and couldn’t breathe. OMG, I couldn’t breathe. This body was devoid of oxygen, and freezing cold, and dead. The Slayer used all her strength to force the chest to move up and down, drawing in a ragged breath. Being shoved into a dead body was not the welcome home I’d hoped for, not after what I’d been through, not after the bends, not after...OMG, Mom!

 

She was sobbing. She hadn’t sobbed when she sat next to my cold dead body, or when she’d been praying, but now, I felt her tears, hot as boiling water trickling over my skin.

 

“Oh my baby, my beautiful baby.” She was rocking and kissing the back of my hand. The Slayer was right, this had been worth coming back to.

 

**********************************

 

I’m going to answer it before you ask. Why, if I died, wasn’t a new Slayer called? 

Time signatures. At no time was the Slayer inside of an inanimate body. Had Slayer returned to the body without Buffy in tow, that would have broken the connection and the Slayer would have been deposited in the body of a living 15-year-old girl somewhere. 

The Slayer, with her survival instinct intact, very much wanted to stay connected to the body and mind of a trained Slayer. She went looking for errant Buffy and dragged my sorry ass home again. We entered Buffy’s body at the same second that the crucifix mojo went to work and brought my poor cold body shuddering back to life. 

Slayer instinct knew enough about both the natural and supernatural to realize we had to take the plunge at precisely the right moment for all of it to work. Good thing too, because Buffy wouldn’t have known that. 

It actually would have been possible for me (Buffy) to enter my body and let Slayer go find a new girl to haunt, but Slayer had been having a pretty good run with me and decided to stick around for the duration.

 

Why was Spike turned? You indicate that it's rare and usually for a particular purpose. Can you tell us more about his sire? It wasn't Drusilla, I gather since you say it was his "dean". Does Drusilla exist in this world? Is her fictional self an amalgam?

Vampires go in and out of fashion. That would sound very strange if they weren’t currently “in fashion” because that proves my point. People get fascinated by things for a while, and then it drops out of interest and something else gets attention. 

During the period when Spike was turned, vampires were “in fashion” in England. People were titillated by dramatic dark Gothic romances and tales of horror. People with “means” (money) had the time and resources to indulge themselves.

Spike says that when he was a young man, and Gothic tales were all the rage, the thrill of being scared was used as a sort of sexual titillation. Men weren’t supposed to “handle” women, but they could get them quite aroused with a tale of terror and the squeal of fear and fainting was a sort of parallel to the woman climaxing, it was like a faux sexual encounter, which was part of the fun of it. You got to hold a girl in your arms under the pretense of rescuing her. 

Spike wasn’t upper crust, as in landed or titled gentry. His father was a successful businessman and his family was comfortable and educated. Spike was a second of three sons, His father intended to divide his business among all of his boys, but with the eldest son getting the largest portion. 

His father believed in putting his sons to work, so they wouldn’t inherit the business only to fritter it away. They needed to know how to work hard, and not be afraid to get their hands dirty, even working side by side with their employees, if that is what it took. 

While Spike understood the wisdom of it and had a great deal of respect for his father, he also felt the restlessness of a headstrong young man. 

Spike was befriended by a young man of the upper landed class, who began to pay a great deal of attention to him. The man wooed him complimenting him on his work ethic, looks, and intelligence, and planting ideas of a better life in his head. 

He invited Spike to some of his soirées with friends where wine, drugs and other entertainments flowed freely. He didn’t have to settle for making a girl “faint” into his arms in terror, at the parties women were free for the taking. The friend told Spike he could be part of that world if he only gave the word. 

After a relatively minor and stupid blow up with his own father and brothers, and fanned by discontent, Spike went to his friend and took him up on his offer. 

Spike had already drawn the attention of one of the older wealthy men in the “society” that held these private debaucheries modeled after the most salacious Gothic horror stories. The man told Spike he would take him on in return for services. Spike didn’t ask a lot of questions, though he had a fair idea that the service he would be providing was neither moral nor legal. Spike had thought the talk of vampires was...talk, and that the men were delusional on drugs, believed themselves to be vampires and under the influence even drank blood.

Spike’s dean was a member of the Vampire Tribunal when it was not much more than a bad boy’s club. Wealthy vampires would selectively turn young men who they wanted to have as part of their society, taking them on as wards. In Spike’s time, it was not uncommon for a wealthy man to take in an orphan (usually a relative or child of a friend) and provide them with education and sometimes with an inheritance. 

The vampire wards were not orphans and were usually young men who had reached their “majority” (legal age). They had already had their traditional education and now received an education in the finer aspects of living as a vampire. They paid for their education and protection by doing the dirty work of collecting victims etc for their deans.(or in the case of women, providing sexual favors) Sometimes vampire fathers turned their own sons. Sometimes they killed their sons and took on a ward to replace them. 

Spike procured drugs, lured beautiful young women, and provided thug work (which is why he refuses it to this day) to supply the needs of his dean and his dean’s companions. He proved himself useful as a mortal man. 

Impressed by his service, and unbeknownst to Spike, his dean made the decision. At one of the parties, drugged, and enjoying the attention of a beautiful woman (vampire) he was turned. He woke in a cage, mad with bloodlust, and out of his mind. His dean, along with two other wards, taught Spike what it meant to be a vampire, and what he must do to remain under the protection of his dean. 

He refers to it as indentured servitude. He was a well-kept pet and allowed to enjoy some of the good life in return for work that taught Spike to be a very effective con man, thief, killer, and seducer of women. 

He kept loose contact with his family until he grew too ashamed and felt it was too dangerous for them. He cut all contact after an accidental encounter with his sister where she ran screaming calling out to God for mercy. He hoped she didn’t recognize him in the monster she saw and that she wouldn’t tell his mother. 

Once he learned the ropes, he got restless. Confident that he could fend for himself he left the home of his dean. He took another one of the wards with him but quickly tired of him and killed him as so much dead weight. 

His dean tracked him down and attempted to bring him back under control by threatening to kill Spike’s family. 

The Dean’s human son enraged that he wasn’t going to get his inheritance and jealous of the attention his father paid to his wards, organized a plot to kill him. Spike, along with the remaining ward, eager for freedom (and a generous bounty), assisted. 

Knowing it was best for his family if he left the area, he set off to see the world. Spike spent time with vampire friends relishing in vamp life, each of them trying to outdo each other. 

He met Angel, who was also sowing his oats. Angel kept several female vampires with him, and one of the ladies took a fancy to Spike. The character of Dru is partly based on that woman, she was one of Angel’s “creations”. Spike says she was as dotty as they come but had a sort of mesmerizing beauty. After a while, Spike felt that he was too much like a kept lapdog and tried to assert himself, which Angel would have none of. If Spike wanted to stay, he had to be subservient. 

He broke with the group, following a vicious fight with Angel, and tried to get the woman to leave with him. She refused, out of fear of Angel, who cruelly punished her. 

Spike seduced one of Angel’s new girls (also a vampire) and it became something of a game whenever he crossed Angel’s path, to woo some of his women away. 

After the second world war, he ran across Angel and company and met the actual Drusilla. They took an immediate shine to one another and started an affair. Intrigued by Spike’s refusal to bend to Angel, Dru ran off with him and they spent a tempestuous two decades urging one another on. They grew tired of each other after a time, and after several short-lived affairs with others Dru returned to Angel. 

Spike and Dru would periodically run into one another and renew their dalliance but they never partnered again. Their reunions were partly to annoy Angel and partly because they were well matched in personality and sexual proclivities. 

The real Dru wasn’t a seer, nor was she insane, “a bit of a loose wire” is how Spike puts it, she’d do anything (and anyone) on a dare. TV Dru is mostly an amalgam, but her story does demonstrate the real-life dynamic between Spike and Angel over the decades.


	16. The One Where I Thaw Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy begins the slow and painful process of recovery

The One Where I Thaw Out

 

My rational mind told me it was over. We’d done it and I didn’t have to worry, or be afraid, or be sad anymore. I was home. I was safe. I was whole. Unfortunately, I was unable to move or speak, even forcing my eyelids open was impossible. Buffy and the Slayer were back, we were just taking a personal day (or three), but I had no way of letting them know. I wished I could dismiss them. Go home. Go on. Go out and order yourself a pizza or something. Nothing to see here. I wanted all of them gone except my mother.

 

Of course, that wasn’t going to happen. They weren’t sure I was back. They had a body with a sluggish heartbeat and shallow breathing. Via sorcery, Oscar and Wendy had confirmed that Buffy and the Slayer were once again present, but my appearance was far from encouraging. And I was cold, refrigerator cold.

 

The crew wanted to warm me up quickly but Spike’s guy said that it would be dangerous. I wasn’t suffering normal hypothermia, this was the result of time lag. My body needed to catch up to itself. My Slayer healing would allow me to recover from a body temperature that would almost certainly be fatal to others, but some things couldn’t be rushed. Oscar suggested they put me in a tub of cold water and raise the temperature incrementally, one degree an hour until I was warm again.

 

“That’s going to take two days.” Xander estimated. His response was both, “you’ve got to be kidding me” protest and part “ok, who’s going to take which shift?” efficiency.

 

Usually, when you’re cold it’s lovely to go someplace snug and feel the warmth seep back into you. This wasn’t like that. I had no cozy hot water bottle and mug of cocoa, instead, they had me in a tub of cold water with warm water running at a trickle. The person on duty stirred the water with a plastic spatula. Every 15 minutes they dribbled a little tepid Gatorade into my mouth letting it seep in between my clenched teeth, in an effort to rehydrate me.

 

This time there was no state of the art, Council provided, medical care because things haven’t been worked out with the Council. Both sides had some serious explaining to do and things would go better for my side if I was alive enough to help them explain.

 

The Council had immediately dispatched half a dozen Watchers, sorcerers and senior admins to find out what the heck just happened in Collinsville. They had missing Slayer, and a deployed tracer bomb but they also had a Slayer lineage that was in tact and no new Slayer elsewhere on the globe.

 

“Slayer Mom instinct,business like” told “Slayer Mom” to practice “Slayer Mom’s right of refusal”. She wouldn’t let them in the door. She wouldn’t tell them if I was or was not inside. Giles, not surprisingly, was in hot water. Too bad he and I couldn’t switch places.

 

My body was experiencing severe hypothermia, but I’m not sure what the medical term for my cognitive condition was. I slept a great deal but when I was awake, I could hear and feel everything that went on around me, I just couldn’t react to it.

 

The crew set up tub patrol shifts that were four hours long. It was boring work, but the crew, as usual, was astoundingly efficient. They made up a schedule for Buffy watch, and each brought their own unique style to the task. Giles, when the others were around, spoke about Buffy in the third person business-like, but when it was just the two of us together, he spoke very sweetly and encouragingly and read Winnie the Pooh to me.

 

Wendy studied while she was on duty, and made a running commentary about her reading material, sometimes arguing with the author or elaborating on her own ideas. She’d take breaks during which she spoke to me about the confrontation with Ovid, and how they were dealing with it all. She apologized a lot, which was unnecessary. Wendy had done her job correctly, it was Buffy who’d taken off without warning.

 

My mother was exactly what you’d want a mother to be. Concerned, kind, efficient and reasonable. She referred to me as kiddo, admitted how tired she was, and told me that the priest had freaked when he went to the hospital to see me (they’d told him they were taking me straight there) and I couldn’t be found. He’d called my mother up, certain that I had died. While she was on duty, she cried some, she laughed some, and sometimes she lit a scented candle.

 

I slept a great deal of the time, and I don’t remember much of what people said to or about me. I remember the impressions, the cadence of their voices, the different qualities of pressure when they handled me. My mother was firm, Wendy was tentative, Giles was anxious, Xander was cautiously reverent.

 

Being warmed that slowly was a form of exquisite torture. It’s was like showing a starved person food and telling them they could only have a crumb. Each degree of heat sent a wave of hopeful longing through me, but I was denied the next one for another painful hour.

 

I wasn’t able to speak until my body had reached 74 degrees. I believe my first words were, “This totally sucks.” Xander was the lucky recipient of my ungrateful greeting.

 

“Buffy?”

 

“In the flesh,” I croaked. I wasn’t trying to be funny (even though I was naked in the tub), it’s just the first thought that came to mind.

 

When I had been really cold, my body didn’t feel much or think much, but the closer I came to room temperature the more I became aware of just how bad I felt, and how much I hurt. It was the worst case of pins and needles ever and I felt in both my body, and my brain.

 

After growling at Xander, I began to complain about my headache and body aches. They mixed some children’s liquid ibuprofen with my Gatorade. That made me puke which necessitated an uncomfortable water change.

 

I had been fine at the bottom of the ocean. If they were going to keep me in cold water anyway, why couldn’t I have stayed there? This blew.

 

I found the best way to deal, was to lay as far under the water as possible with just my nose sticking out. I even kept my eyes under the water. This way I didn’t hear as much and I wasn’t tempted to look around. It was nothing like the ocean floor, but it made it easier to pretend that was where I was. Heavy thinking made me nauseous so I couldn’t pretend very hard. Occasionally I caught myself crying. Did you know tears still sting, even under water? Welcome to the wonderful world of phase shifting.

 

Somewhere during the second night, there was a changing of the guard. My ears and eyes were underwater, but my nose was not. I recognized the smell of his cigarettes. My eyes flew open. Realizing they were still under the water, I tried to lift my head, but it slid back down, and I ended up sputtering. It was dark. I was stiff and confused and everything hurt.

 

“Shhhh Luv, I’m here”

 

It was reassuring how he took for granted that I was “here” too. No “Buffy are you in there?” “blink once for yes” or “Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”

 

“Just wait one minute.” His head was in the linen closet. He pulled out a stack of towels, then disappeared.

 

My body began to feel horribly heavy. I hadn’t realized he had pulled the plug on the bath. It felt like I was being sucked down the drain with the water, and for a few moments, I panicked.

 

Spike came back, stripped to his T-shirt and boxers. He picked up my wet, cold body and carried it to my bedroom. He set me gently, yet still very painfully, onto the towels he’d spread on the bed and wrapped me in them.

 

I could speak if I really cared to. My jaw was stiff and my tongue felt like it weighed several pounds, but I could force out words. Still, I couldn’t think of anything pithy to say without my brain going all nails on a chalkboard, so I let it go.

 

Lying on the bed was extremely uncomfortable. I thought the tub was bad, but at least I had the water holding me up. Now I felt like I weighed a thousand pounds.

 

Spike carefully patted my hair with a towel trying to sop up the water that trickled from it.

 

“Who let you in?” I hadn’t planned on saying anything, but there it was.

 

“Your mum.”

 

I was relieved. That meant this was a sanctioned visit.

 

It’s a rare day when a vampire’s hands feel warm to the touch. It was a nice change that they didn’t feel burning hot, or nervous the way the hands of some of my well-meaning captors. Spike’s hands were not too hot, not too cold...they were just right.

 

“What are you going to do to me?” I was curious. I mean, I knew he was a vampire and the idea of being in bed next to a cold stiff probably wasn’t as distasteful to him as it would be for the average man, but still, I wasn’t overly responsive.

 

“Dry you off. You look a sight.” He was clearly displeased. Maybe the cold stiff muscles didn’t bother him but apparently, the blue pruney skin was a turn-off.

 

I felt, given the circumstances, we should be saying something meaningful, but my brain was only firing off the most basic thoughts. Mostly what I thought was "relief."

 

“Does this hurt?” He toweled my hair.

 

“Yes.” But then again, everything hurt.

 

He stood over me, frowning as he looked me up and down. He had come back to reclaim me. He hadn’t asked permission and he didn’t much care about any schedule the rest of them had put into place. He just took me out of the tub, dried me off, and set me in our bed. Now he was trying to figure out what to do next.

 

He wrapped a towel around my hair, then moved me to the far side of the bed and got in beside me.

 

“You feel warm.” There was a dreamy note in my tone.

 

“Now I know how you feel when I’m beside you.” He chuckled, nestling me against him, he shivered, and my heart felt like it broke open. There was nothing in the world I wanted more than to be next to him. His warmth, such as it was, began to seep into me.

 

After a time, I began to shiver violently. He held me as well as he could and told me the shivering was something my body had to do to take control of itself again. “Establish domain” was the term he used. It was going to take time, and he was going to wait it out with me. My heart did that weepy thing it does. It swelled and felt all hot and hollow.

 

Spike wrapped me tightly in a blanket, against the shivering and did the next most sensible thing; he went downstairs and made me tea. It was barely warm, I am sure, but it felt hot to me. He’d made it his way, weak with lots of milk and sugar and he spooned it into me, holding me up against him. I nearly wept with joy, it was so much better than Gatorade.

 

My mother came in, a robe wrapped around her.

 

“How are you.” She came and sat on the edge of the bed, in the dark.

 

“Mom,” I croaked. I tried to smile, but I don’t know if it made it all the way to my face or if she saw it.

 

“I let him in,” she confessed.

 

“Thank you.” I was talking to both of them.

 

I was in pain in ways I didn’t know existed before. I could barely move my stiff muscles and my head felt like a huge clanging bell. I couldn’t put together a coherent thought but I knew what love felt like, weak milky tea, and my mom’s dry hand.

 

Spike pulled me a little way across the bed and my mom got in beside us. We sat together quietly recovering. By the time I woke up in the morning, Spike felt cool to me again. My mother was curled up, facing away from me. I was still stiffly wrapped between them, I wriggled like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and woke both of them up.

 

My mom looked confused for a moment, then she saw me and smiled.

 

“I need dry clothes,” I said, my waterlogged skin felt damp beneath the towels.

 

She got up to get me pajamas while Spike unwrapped me.

 

“You’re not blue anymore!” she said triumphantly. “Grey’s not your best color, but it’s an improvement.”

 

She and Spike dressed me, every time they bent my joints, I winced. Their eyes met from time to time, I assumed in concern, but also in relief. The pain was a sign that my circulation was back and my nervous system was properly functioning.

 

Spike went downstairs to make tea and coffee while my mother combed through my messy and still damp hair. “Back among the living.” She gave me a gentle hug.

 

“Everything hurts.” I knew I had said that several times since my reawakening, but it summed things up so well that it made sense to say it again. I wondered technically, how many hours or days I had left on tub patrol.

 

“Ow.” I cringed, as her comb snagged on an especially bad snarl.

 

“Sorry, sweety.” She kissed my temple and caught the reflection of the two of us together, in my mirror across the room. We both wore the same hopeful smile. We could hear Spike coming up the stairs with hot drinks.

 

“Tell me if this is too warm.” He held some tea out on a spoon to me.

 

“Perfect.” I sighed.

 

“Think you can hold it?” He offered me the mug.

 

I shook my head. I might have been able to hold onto it, but I would have soon shivered the contents out all over myself and my dry clothes, so he spooned it into me between taking sips from his own steaming mug.

 

Xander came thumping up the steps, ready to take his shift on tub patrol. He stopped short at my bedroom door. I’m not sure what shocked him the most, me, dressed and upright, or Spike in his underwear drinking tea with my mother.

 

“You’re out of the tub,” Xander said, forcing a smile over his mask of confusion.

 

None of the crew, save Wendy, had seen Spike and I touching and Xander hadn’t seen Spike and me together in over three years. He had never seen us interact in anything like a chummy manner, let alone like this.

 

Even though Xander knew critical intel had come from Spike during the last stressful week, in his mind, Spike was still that conniving vampire who occasionally came through town on questionable business. The idea of Spike as Buffy’s savior and boyfriend wasn’t within the realm of consideration.

 

This wasn’t just a surprise to him, it was a blow. What he saw was so obviously a scene of domestic familiarity that it couldn’t be accounted for by circumstances alone. Over the past few days Xander, along with nearly everyone else I knew, had seen me naked. I had nothing left to hide from any of these people. But this was different. I had a half dressed vampire in my room. This wasn’t by necessity, it was by choice.

 

“Would you like some coffee?” My mother stood up and went to Xander. “I’m sure there’s more.” She looked to Spike for confirmation.

 

Xander didn’t know what to say, and I could hardly blame him, accepting coffee meant joining the assemblage, and he had no clue where he fit in. Spike put down my mug and spoon. “I’ll be taking advantage of the shower, now that it’s available.” He gave me a playful look as if accusing me of hogging all the hot water. He grabbed his pillowcase of clothing and left the room.

 

“So, Buff.” Xander’s grin, at my improved condition, was authentic, “You’re ok.”

 

“I think so.” I said hesitantly. “Still too soon to tell.” I shivered and he quickly went and got the blanket off the bed. It was damp and I shook my head. “In my mom’s room.” I said between chattering teeth.

 

He returned with the fresh blanket, the same time my mom came in with a mug of coffee for him, and a box of cookies.

 

“She’s up,” Xander said awkwardly to my mom. He looked from her to me as if he was waiting for an explanation, perhaps the story of how I sat up and said, “Hey, I think I’m ready to get out of the tub now!” But it wasn’t forthcoming.

 

“She’s upright,” my mom corrected. “She’s not up, not just yet.” She put her hand on my arm to feel my temperature, and emphasize that the only place I was going was back to bed. “Nearly normal.” She looked impressed.

 

“The English and their tea,” I said through chattering teeth.

 

“So Spike’s staying here?” Xander’s tone packed a LOT of meaning into those two words.

 

My mom was going to have to field that one. She’d invited him in.

 

“I think, for awhile,” she said, taking a cookie.

 

We all knew Xander wasn’t going to ask for any further details. He wasn’t like that. He didn’t push.

 

The situation wasn’t helped when Spike returned from his shower, shirtless, with a towel around his neck. He put his cheek to my forehead to check my temperature, then he took my comb and began to comb his hair.

 

I swear I could hear something in Xander shatter. Not only had Spike obviously gotten closer to me than Xander ever had, but I hadn’t even mentioned, to one of my dearest friends, that I had a live in vampire boyfriend who was pals with my mom. Xander didn’t know Spike or how he operated, the way he came in and took over situations without a second thought.

 

Spike felt my tea then gave me his. “Yours has gone cold.” Every simple act somehow managed to scream that I belonged to him. The only one who didn’t feel awkward about it was Spike himself.

 

I don’t want to make it sound like it was all on Spike and that I had no choice but to go along, nor did I just “let him get away with it”. I liked it. Spike definitely got lots of positive reinforcement. Had I discouraged him, he would have left, the way he did the morning that told him I didn’t trust him. Spike would go to great lengths to convince me to accept the plan to save my life, but he wouldn’t try to convince me to accept him. Either I wanted him or I didn’t.

 

Spike doesn’t handle rejection from women well. I think it’s why he acts all take chargey. It’s his way of saying “I’m already here, get with the program.” It makes them feel like having him around might have been their idea in the first place. That part I did let him get away with, and, to be fair, I had invited him into my bedroom that night long ago. He would stay as long as I would have him, but I had to take him as he was. He hadn’t always been that way.

 

Spike was raised during a time when men were expected to control their women. It was considered proper for a man to discipline his wife the way he’d discipline his kids. Things could get ugly...beating, choking and it wasn’t limited to physical force, a man might use intimidation and shaming, or degrade the mother in front of the children, or worse, threaten to take the children away.

 

That behavior wasn’t considered abusive in his society. That’s what he knew, and in his earlier years that was how he behaved. He backhanded his partners if they “acted up”. He beat them if they talked back. It wasn’t “my way, or the highway” it was “my way...or else”. If they stepped out on him he killed them and their partner.

 

By the time I knew him, he’d had 140 years of experience in “dealing” with women, and his methods had changed. He no longer lived in a world where wives were property. He no longer needed someone to be subservient in order for him to feel powerful. He knew he was strong. Hanging on to a bird to show her who’s boss or to prove to the world he could make her behave, held no appeal.

 

As a vampire, obviously, he could “have” women simply by taking them. (and he has) Even so, Spike says, other than killing to feed, he always preferred to woo (seduce) a woman the “natural” way. He says it’s sweeter to have a woman by desire than by force, and he has always preferred mortal women to vampires. (Dru being a notable exception)

 

By the time Spike met me, he held an appreciation, and pride in what it meant to be a vampire, but he’d also developed an appreciation for how short and fragile human lives are. He’d watched five generations of people come and go. He’d loved and lost, and felt the effects of changing times. He’d learned life, and people, are often more enjoyable when you take the time to get to know them, and not just pummel them into submission.

 

Knowing how much he can take by force, affords him the luxury of enjoying the process of acquiring something the mundane way. If he runs out of patience, he can revert to Big Bad Vampire, or simply walk away. Time means something very different after 160 years than it does at 40 or 80. It meant something different to me that morning, having experienced phase shifting.

 

Time isn’t just a conveyor belt carrying us past the scenery towards our inevitable end. I found out I could surf it, fight it, lose myself in it, and even let it rescue me from myself.

 

I guessed love was sort of like that too. It was malleable, and I could make it my enemy or my friend. Three years earlier I sometimes felt my mother’s love was a burden because it made me feel guilty about being the Slayer. One year earlier I had handed Xander’s love back to him on a platter. One week earlier I told Spike I couldn’t trust him. In each of those instances their love had felt like a responsibility I didn’t want to deal with, yet here they all were, still loving me, thrilled to have me back, and I was beyond grateful that they were here.

 

Xander finished his cookie, but his mug was still half full. “Well, I guess if you don’t need me…” He stood up. Was THAT what he thought?

 

“Xander, you saved my life.” I couldn’t let him leave, thinking that was lost on me.

 

“Nah, I didn’t really do much…” I could see he believed it. In the midst of all the supernatural, he didn’t see that the mundane is what we live for. Coffee and cookies and blankets. I would rather watch a movie with him than phase shift, any day of the week.

 

I could see Spike take it all in, assess the situation between Xander and me, and fit together the pieces, that by tacit agreement, we never spoke of aloud.

 

Spike and Xander sized one another up, not competitively, it was too late for that. They were determining the role the other played in my life, and they tested the weight of it to determine how best to handle things. Was it something that could be dealt with using grace, or would they need to lug it around as so much dead weight?

 

“It’s good to have you back, Buffy.” Xander leaned over and hugged me. I hugged him back hard.

 

“Joyce.” He hugged her too. “Spike,” he said with a nod. Xander’s lips twitched as he said the name, his brow slightly creased. He slowly extended his hand towards Spike.

 

Spike took it, but not merely in a handshake, he closed both his hands over Xander’s, holding them a moment. He wasn’t reading them (I’m sure he’d gotten all the information he needed just from Xander’s expression) it was a “thank you”. He didn’t use words, which Xander would refuse. Instead, he affirmed him. Of course, it cost Spike nothing, he wasn’t short on pride and he’d already won the girl.

 

Xander was surprised, and for a moment I thought he was going to lift his other hand and close it over Spike’s, but just then Spike slipped away. By the time Xander looked over and met my eye, Spike’s hands were on my shoulders.

 

Xander grabbed another cookie “For the road.” He forced a grin.

 

We watched him go, then my mother turned to me. “Back into bed with you.”

 

I didn’t argue. I let my head fall to the side, my cheek coming to rest on Spike’s arm. He scooped me up. As he laid me onto the bed I whispered into his ear, “Aren’t you going to say ‘I told you so’?” He’d been right about everything and I’d still sent him away.

 

He looked at me sternly and said, “No, but don’t you ever put me in a position like that again.” He pressed his forehead to mine, but before he did I saw emotions passing behind his eyes: jacuzzieshurt, frustration, relief.

 

I wanted to tell him I wouldn’t, but I didn’t know what life would throw at me. What I did know, was that I could trust Spike implicitly. I didn’t think I would ever doubt him again, and I couldn’t imagine that I would ever send him away.

 

I fell asleep to the sound of him collecting the tea things to take downstairs.

 

*********************************

 

Q&A

What is Spike's real name?

Spike's Christian name (that's what they called it in his time) is William. Out of respect for his family, which he dearly loved but sorely disrespected and let down, he doesn't share his family name. "Bell" was chosen for use in this book. It is the last name of his dean, and he doesn't give a dead cock (rooster) if that buggerer goes down in history for the waste of humanity he was.

 

Ha ha, this one is from the beta. Buffy, do you expect us to believe that they actually used a bath tub and plastic spatula to thaw you out?

Since the readers have so ruthlessly ratted me out on age and era...yes. The advancements in technology over the past...few years...have been astounding. Back then, hot jacuzzi's weren't common in normal households, nor were instant hot water on demand, water heaters, etc. 

This chapter took place in the two days following the Council's attempt to kill me, and there was no way my crew (not to mention my mother) was going to let them have any access to me, not even under the guise of helping me. They really were counting on Slayer strength to pull me through. Looking back, it wasn't just Slayer strength, it was love, pure and simple.

 

Was Oscar part of the Crew?

No, Oscar was hired to help. He never had bathtub duty. We did occasionally call him in or seek his advice, and Wendy, especially, kept in touch, but that was the extent of his cooperation. 

 

What ever happened to the crucifix?

More on that later.


	17. The One Where I Realize That Other People Have Feelings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy gains some insight on reciprocity and sacrifice and what supporting the Slayer costs her friends and family

The One Where I Realize That Other People Have Feelings Too

 

 

My temperature kept increasing throughout the day and into the night. By the next morning, I was burning up with fever and having trouble breathing. When I’d been cold, the germs weren’t able to grow, now that I was warm again they were free to bloom.

 

Giles commented that it was likely the result of me leaving the baths too soon. Oscar said it was due to how long my body went without breathing when I went missing during the phase shift. Wendy was afraid that even though we knew the Slayer was “back” she might not have entered my body and I wasn’t getting the benefit of Slayer healing.

 

My mother didn’t waste time worrying about why it was happening, she called an ambulance and I went to the hospital where they put me on oxygen and pumped me full of antibiotics.

 

I wasn’t being seen by Council doctors because we weren’t yet squared with the Council and all that had taken place. We weren’t afraid that they would do me in. There was no good reason to take out a trained Slayer, plus they knew we were on to them, but neither was my mom willing to place me under their dubious protection. That pissed the Council off in a huge way.

 

Giles wasn’t going to meet with the Council delegates for anything but the mildest debriefing until I was whole, well and could be present. Mama Bear kept the Council from visiting me or seeing any of my records. They might have seen them anyway, they have people on the inside but it was important for our side to draw a line, and for them to at least pretend that they weren’t crossing it.

 

I was too sick to care. I hadn’t been this physically ill since, well, EVER. It was made worse by the fact that my body was also dealing with the issue of “latent residuals”. When they phased my body back to the current time, not all the parts were phased in at the same moment, and, they were beginning to suspect, some were even lost in time.

 

Wendy, Giles and Spike’s guy were still combing for missing bits, I’m not talking about major organs here, but my body had been zapped through hundreds of time signatures. Leaving a load of enzymes here, a heap of white blood cells there, and my body’s store of vitamin K someplace else can cause a lot of trouble.

 

It’s harder for a body to fight disease when some of its blood cells, for instance, are out of phase with the liver and only connecting a fraction of the time they should be. Things were seriously weird. The pinky fingernail on my left hand has never been fully recovered and grows several degrees slower than the rest of my nails. I had issues with my hypothalamus and thermoregulation for months after the incident. On the plus side, I’m significantly less ticklish.

 

As serious as my pneumonia was, we weren’t afraid I’d die. It seemed impossible that I had survived all the supernatural mojo only to die afterward from something as mundane as pneumonia. To stay on the safe side, the crucifix accompanied me to the hospital.

 

Spike did take responsibility for the fact that I didn’t have my crucifix on my person that night he’d removed me from the tub. For obvious reasons, I was not in contact with it while he was in contact with me. We don’t know if it would have made a difference or not but it might have. He hadn’t thought of it, simple as that. He swears he wouldn’t have knowingly put me at risk just to have me beside him.

 

I spent a lot of the time I was on the ventilator thinking about being at the bottom of the sea. No one knew about that. There hadn’t been time to talk about things. I kept imagining that I was back there and I think it helped save my life. Just as the pressure of the water had held my Buffy essence together, the memory of that, now held my concentration together while the sorcerers were rephasing me, or, as Wendy put it, recalibrating me.

 

Spike’s guy said that was what they needed to do was to stop trying to patch in the recovered bits one at a time as they located them. They needed to stop me, integrate all the parts, then jump start all of me at once.

 

The doctors and nurses SO did not love when my monitors went kablooey and my body flashed in and out of existence on my hospital bed. They were all kinds of freaked out when my body was dumped, sans ventilator, IV’s, hospital gown and other various hook ups and attachments, onto the hospital room floor.

 

It was ultimately explained away as a severe seizure, that was our story and we were sticking to it! The recalibration did the trick, in 12 hours I was off the oxygen, Slayer healing was kicking in and I was itching to go home.

 

Dawn and my father had come to visit me in the hospital. It had been kind of pointless from my side because, I was way too sick to interact, but my mom said Dawn needed to see me. As soon as I showed improvement, we planned for Dawn to spend the weekend home.

 

Spike didn’t come to visit me in the hospital. I didn’t think much of it. At first, I was SO sick that I wasn’t thinking about much of anything. When I began to feel better it crossed my mind but a vampire in a hospital seemed out of place. People were there to get better, not become unwilling blood donors. I assumed he would be lying on my bed finishing that novel when I got home.

 

On the way home from the hospital, I was wondering where Spike would put up during the nights when Dawn was home, and I was already feeling a little sorry for myself. I was looking forward to spending the night beside him. I missed his touch and I missed his chuckle. I was shocked when I walked in the front door and he didn’t appear at the top of the stairs. Surely he heard us, surely he was waiting for me.

 

“Spike?” I put my feelers out, the house was empty.

 

“He’s not here.” My mom was close behind me, carrying my bag of clothes. I felt VERY self-conscious about that, here I was, supernaturally strong, yet my mom was carrying my things for me. I was following Dr’s orders; no heavy lifting, or any activity that required heavy breathing. Spike was NOT going to like that last part.

 

Not here? NOT here? I felt like my brain was shorting out. Why would he leave???!!! HOW could he leave without saying goodbye?

 

My brain began to spin, he had been gone for over two years before he’d returned 2 weeks ago when all this mess started up, and it did fit Spike’s profile to up and leave once the I’s were dotted and the T’s crossed. Had this been another drive-by?

 

I wheezed, but not from my lung condition.

 

“Where is he?” I formed the words very carefully.

 

“I’m not sure, but he’ll be back.” She put my bag next to the couch, sat down and threw her feet onto the coffee table. “Oh god."

 

She looked beat, nearly as beat as me. This had all been ridiculously hard on her. I wanted to be able to make this easy for her and not ask for a single thing more. I truly did, but I wasn’t myself yet.

 

“Did he say WHEN he’d be back?” My mother didn’t know about vampire time, how “I’ll be back” could as easily refer to a decade as a day.

 

She looked at me with a look of weary resignation. Here she’d been doing all this for me, on top of the fear and worry, and instead of sitting beside her and telling her she was the best mom ever I was grilling her about where “Mr. Comes and Goes as He Pleases” had come and gone.

 

“Buffy, I don’t know. He doesn’t answer to me.” There was an edge in her tone. I understood why she felt as she did. He blew into town and my life exploded. There had been no end of worry since the second he’d shown up on our doorstep, and here I was, not in the door 30 seconds and the first thing I asked about was HIM.

 

Upon further thought, it made sense that he wasn’t alone in the house with my mother while I was gone. That was against our gentleman’s agreement. It was stupid for me to think he’d be waiting for me.

 

“If you want to go to bed, I’ll bring this up in a little while. Is there anything you desperately need to have?” She motioned to the bag.

 

“No, it’s fine, rest.” I began to climb the stairs. She suddenly realized what I was doing and sat up to come to my aid.

 

“No, mom, it’s ok. I’m fine.” I smiled at her. Climbing up the stairs was not a problem. I changed into sweats and a T. Even though I was tired of being in bed, my blanket and pillow looked inviting. I climbed in and closed my eyes when they opened again it was the middle of the night. I had to pee very badly. At first, I thought I was in the hospital room and that I would have to ask someone for help wheeling my IV stand, then I realized I was home.

 

I sat on the edge of the bed still confused. The crucifix was propped up against the base of the lamp. There was the novel, in the same place it had been when Spike first found it. What if this had been a dream? What if we hadn’t yet faced Ovid? What if that was still in the future, maybe tomorrow or the next day. How could I possibly do it?

 

My heart raced in a panic. Lattes, sea lions, clouds of glitter, and the taste of Gatorade being puked back up roared into focus. Right then and there I decided that if it hadn’t happened yet, I was going to let the Council take me out because I couldn’t bear to go through all of it again. They could have me. I was done.

 

I went to the bathroom, had a long drink of water and crawled back into bed. Once there, I began to sink into the depths of my mind, I wanted to be back at the bottom of the sea where no one could find me. I would be cold, but I’d be safe and held together in one piece. It was a place Ovid would never look for me.

 

I remembered Spike’s words, and his tone of voice, telling me the Council’s plan was bullshit, imploring me not to give up. But it was too much and I just wanted out. How was I going to tell my mother?

 

“Buffy?” My mom came padding over. “I didn’t want to wake you for your pill, but you should take it now.”

 

“Mom, what’s this pill for?”

 

“It’s your antibiotics.”

 

“Why am I taking antibiotics?”

 

She felt my forehead. “You just got out of the hospital.”

 

“How long was I there?”

 

“Nearly four days, Buffy, are you alright?”

 

“Was Spike here? Before? Did he meet you? And Dawn?”

 

“Yes Buffy, of course. You don’t remember?”

 

“I do, I’m just not sure what I’m remembering. Mom, did I die?”

 

My poor mother, she later told me at that instant, she thought she was going to lose her mind because she was going to have to explain in all to me. “Yes, you died. But you’re OK now...we think.”

 

She’s told me she had an awful vision, just then, of me being some kind of amnesiac who would have to be babysat all the time and would ask the same questions over and over again...that we would have to relive it, over and over again. She was weak with exhaustion herself and was damning the Council in her mind for the 1000th time for everything they’d put us through.

 

“So it’s not a dream then? With Ovid and the phase shifting?” I checked.

 

She let out an audible breath. “Oh thank god, you remember.”

 

“I was afraid it hadn’t happened yet.”

 

“That happened, and you made it.It’s over.” She sounded uncertain about it being over, but I knew what she meant.

 

“Buffy, take your pill, and go back to sleep,” she directed me like a child. I wanted to ask her to stay, but I knew that was wrong. She was tired, and I was an adult, and it was my job to act like an adult. So I took the pill, hugged her and got back under my covers.

 

Suddenly I wanted to be outside in the night air, doing normal Slayer things, the kind of things I did back in my early days. I had been so young, and so full of myself. I’d been punchy and argumentative with my Watchers. I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been in general and how unbelievably stupid I’d been with Spike. I remembered sitting on his lap squirming on his erection in Giles office and being so proud of myself for getting away with it. If he had drained me he would have been within his rights. I was stupid enough to deserve it.

 

But that was nothing, just dumb kid stuff. THIS time, saving the Slayer line, dying and trying to reintegrate, THIS was the real deal. Staking a vampire in an alley was like a kindergartner learning their ABC’s. Funny thing was, things hadn’t felt easier then, not at the time.

 

Dawn behaved oddly towards me when she was home. She spoke slowly and carefully. I wondered if, for some reason, my mother had told Dawn that I’d actually died, or that they worried they didn’t have all of me back. Why was she acting that way? “Mom, can you make her stop talking to me like that?” I asked, right in front of Dawn.

 

Dawn looked like she’d been slapped. She’d been worried about me and was trying to be gentle and understanding with me.

 

“It’s just--” I shook my head in frustration. I just didn’t want to deal with anyone’s reaction to what had happened. I didn’t want their feelings and experience to matter. It had happened to ME, not them. ME. I didn’t want to be reminded how worn out my mother was, or how frightened my sister had been, or that the Council was tapping its watch and reminding Giles that the debriefing needed to have happened yesterday.

 

I wanted to be back on the bottom of the sea, where it was cold and dark and loud, so impossibly loud, that I wouldn’t be able to hear their voices. Every time someone asked if I was ok, every time anyone asked me anything I felt like I was going to turn into confetti all over again.

 

“You know Dawn, let’s go out,” My mom said. “Let’s have some you and me time.” My mother needed a break. Of course, she did.

 

As soon as they were gone I called Wendy.

 

“How are you feeling?” was the first thing out of her mouth.

 

“Angry. Resentful. Like putting someone’s head through a wall,” I told her honestly.

 

“Wow.”

 

“Yeah right? Some hangover.”

 

“It could take awhile,” she said gently. We’d been through this several times.

 

“I can’t believe Spike left.” She was the first person I opened up to. “I mean I know he came here just because of what was going on and now it’s over but not even a goodbye?”

 

“Isn’t that kind of the way he operates?”

 

Not with me, not anymore, but she didn’t know the details of how Spike and I were together. There hadn’t been time to tell her.

 

Not only was I still uncertain, but I was also shy to tell her I thought Spike was in love with me. Even if he was, what did that mean? We couldn’t date. We weren’t going to walk down the aisle together. You couldn’t expect your best friend to be happy for you when you announced you were involved in a hopeless, interspecies romance.

 

“He’ll be back,” I said with weary resignation. WHEN he’d be back was the real issue.

 

“I can ask Oscar.”

 

She could, but that would be like I was checking up on Spike, and I was uncomfortable with that, or rather I thought HE’D be uncomfortable with it.

 

We had a relationship but I wasn’t sure what my role was, or what my rights were, or if there was any sanity at all in allowing myself to have expectations.

 

Spike’s words “don’t wait” probably said it all. We had what we had, but I shouldn’t hold my breath.

 

There was a knock on the door. “I think he’s here.” I hung up the phone and went to answer it. It was Giles, I was so mad I threw my shoes at the stairs.

 

Sometimes stress and trauma or grief can make you do and say really stupid things, and even though you know that it’s the result of stress and that you’re “not yourself”, you can’t always stop yourself. You can’t make yourself be someone else who feels and reacts a different way.

 

I KNEW I had to pull myself together and talk to the Council and quit snapping at my mother, and stop avoiding Xander, and quit crying to Wendy and ditching class.

 

Spike returned four days later. He came in the front door, straight up to my room and smiled at me in such an unguarded joyful way I nearly laughed.

 

“You’re back!” we said at the same time.

 

I went to him and started kissing him, pulling his face down to mine, clawing at his neck.

 

“Hey, hey, slow down.” He backed up. “What’s wrong, Luv? It’s like you’re starving for air.”

 

That was pretty much how I felt. He took off his jacket and shoes and locked the door and I got all giddy inside because I was pretty sure I knew what came next. He came to me. “Now, what’s all this about?” He put his arms around me. I didn’t feel desperate anymore. With his jacket and shoes off, he wasn’t going anywhere for awhile.

 

I started to talk, or more likely babble, trying to fill him in on all that had happened, but he stopped me. “You don’t need to relive it for my sake.”

 

Then I didn’t know what to do with myself. Without the mission and the aftermath and all the drama and scuttlebutt, what did I have to say? “Where were you?”

 

“Business, which I don’t care to relive either.” He put an end to that line of questioning. “Are you feeling better?”

 

“They’re pretty sure they have all of me back in the same time zone.”

 

First, he looked me over and ran his hands down my arms, then he looked me in the face, in one eye, then the other, as if he was checking to see if there were any crossed wires inside of my head.

 

Then, we were quiet and still, I realized he looked tired. He was gaunt and bruised. “Are you alright?”

 

“Nothing that won’t mend.” He offered me a tight smile.

 

Good, I thought, then I won’t have to do anything. I knew I was avoiding discussions that needed to happen, thank you’s that needed to be said, and probably more than one apology. I wasn’t sure what for yet, but I felt like I had been sharp and snippy to the people who had gone out on a limb for me.

 

Being the Slayer, I was often the center of attention, and when the job required a great deal of me I became myopic as to how much it was requiring of others as well. I was afraid that if I started listening to them, feeling for them and trying to take care of them I would feel overwhelmed. I was afraid it would suck everything out of me and I would wither like a husk.

 

I hated feeling and acting that way. I wanted to be gracious and grateful. I wanted to be a good loving friend, but I wasn’t, not then, not yet, maybe not ever.

 

I was glad Spike was back because now he could take care of me. Then it dawned on me, I didn’t have any material needs and his return had quieted the worry within me. I didn’t need him to do anything but be there.

 

“Come lay down.” I tugged on his arm.

 

He gave me a look and cracked a grin. I guess he thought he had me figured out and that he’d turned me into a sex crazed monster; the minute I was able to stand on my feet I wanted to throw down with him on the bed.

 

He wouldn’t have been wrong, but in that moment it wasn’t what I was thinking. I wasn’t exactly worried about him, but I knew what it felt like to look the way he looked.

 

He sat on the bed and I pulled at the hem of his shirt. He obediently lifted his arms and I slid the shirt over his head. He looked at me with tolerant amusement when I went to undo the buckle of his belt. “Need help?” he checked.

 

“If you don’t mind.”

 

“For you, anything.” He stood and slipped his pants off and moved to put them on the chair back, but I took them from him and did it myself. He was quietly watching me. I wanted to surprise him, show him that I could be someone other than a high maintenance, stressed out super hero.

 

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, I came and stood between his knees. “I missed you.”

 

His arms slid around my waist and he put his head against my stomach. “You did it.”

 

“No, I was just bait. Everyone else did it. I was sort of done to.” It was true after all. All I had done was say “yes” to the risk. The plan, the work, and the masterminding was all done by others.

 

He didn’t argue, he just said, “Well, I’m glad you’re here.”

 

“I’m glad you’re here too.” My hands began to move through his hair. He leaned into me the way a cat does when you scratch behind its ear. It was nice to know I could do something that made him feel good, and content.

 

One of my hands went to the back of his neck and kneaded the muscles. He bent his head down to expose more neck and my other hand moved there as well. He was passive, just soaking it all up. Usually, he was in charge, barking out orders, or at the very least saying “let me”, but now he was content to let someone else. It felt very intimate to be that “someone else”.

 

“Lie down.” I nudged him with my knee. He complied without a word. He must have been exhausted, I thought if he didn’t have any sort of comeback or innuendo.

 

He gave me a look, I couldn’t quite read. It was something like gratitude. He was grateful that I was taking the lead, that he didn’t have to do the whole Spike thing. We were beyond needing to play the roles and do the dance to get where we were going. He was grateful that, at least for now, he wasn’t going to have to be tolerant towards me, or have to wait for me to catch up.

 

He sank onto the bed with an audible sigh. He put his face down and his neck up inviting my hands to repeat their ministrations. When they did, he made a little sound of pure relief.

 

He lay there and enjoyed my hands working over him, wriggling when he wanted more attention to some stiff or painful set of muscles. I had no idea where he’d been or what he’d been doing, but he’d been knocked around pretty hard.

 

I was used to being the one who did the fighting, the actual hand to hand combat. It was usually my muscles that were sore or torn. No one EVER had put me in a position to tend to them, not like this. I’d often been called in to save them from evil or from a demon or vampire, but not to help them in a personal way.

 

My job was fighting and killing and violence. I had never trained to help and heal and be gentle. I don’t think I believed I could be. I had been massaged and had hands run over my muscles to determine if they’d been twisted, sprained or strained, but it had never been my hand running over someone else.

 

When I got to the small of his back I stopped. He wriggled and looked over his shoulder at me. “Legs?” he said hopefully.

 

I leaned over and kissed him. “Legs.” I agreed.

 

He smiled and rested his head in grateful contentment when I straddled his butt facing his feet and began to work on his legs. That butt straddling bit was my own twist on things. I don’t want you thinking that Giles or Wes had ever done something like that to me. The Council had a female sports therapist on retainer who would do rub downs or help me rehabilitate muscles but she never once straddled me face up OR face down.

 

“You won’t be insulted if I fall asleep will you?” he asked.

 

“You look like you could use some.”

 

“I don’t want to miss a moment of this, but I am worn thin.”

 

I got off of him so I could scoot down to work his calves and ankles. “I’m just glad your back so I can sleep next to you.”

 

He caught my hand between his calves and gave it a little squeeze. My heart jumped to my throat, it was so warm and personal. I’d never had a boyfriend, not really, never someone I was comfortably intimate with. This felt like an “I love you”.

 

I knew he fell asleep just when I began the second foot, but I did it just the same, certain that somewhere in his subconscious he was still enjoying the way it felt to be touched and to be taken care of.

 

I went downstairs to get a drink before getting ready for bed. My mom was on the couch with something in her lap.

 

“Look what he brought.” She motioned to the very nice backgammon set she’d been looking over. It was a beautiful wooden box with inlays of mother of pearl, the interior playing field was soft leather, and the chips dense polished wood.

 

“Wow, that’s?”

 

She held up a black chip. “Ebony, and kidskin.” she fingered one of the long triangles inside, “I’m pretty sure it’s the real deal.”

 

“He doesn’t do things halfway,” I agreed.

 

“Where is he?”

 

“Sleeping. I just came down for a snack. I don’t know where he was but he looks pretty beat.”

 

“I think all of us could benefit from a vacation on the beach in Hawaii.” She sighed.

 

“Spike, not so much. Well, maybe a moonlit beach.” I laughed, then I put my hand on her shoulder. “Mom. Thank you.” My first thought had been to apologize for what I’d put her through, but that would have cheapened it, made it seem like I thought she was an outsider who’d run afoul of some friendly fire. She was, in a very real way, part of the crew. I realized that now. I had spent too much time and energy in my early Slayer years trying to dodge my mother, to make up lies and excuses and tell myself she couldn’t handle it, that she needed to be protected. I knew better now.

 

She didn’t say “You’re welcome” because that too would have cheapened it. She hadn’t done me a favor, or even a good pass. It was so much more than that. I leaned in and hugged her and kissed her and went to get my snack and juice.

 

When I set it on my bedside table, Spike rolled over and opened an eye. He noticed the juice and looked up at me. I handed it to him and he drained the glass and lay back down. “You coming to bed?”

 

“Going to go wash up,” I told him. I leaned in and hugged and kissed him the same way I had my mom. This vampire that had stormed back into my life a few weeks ago and was now, one of the crew? Not exactly, and he certainly wasn’t family but there was definitely a sense that we belonged together.

 

Having basically tucked him into bed I went to the bathroom and washed my face and brushed my teeth and sat on the toilet lid for a few minutes to collect myself. It was like I was surfacing from being under water too long. Realizing I could breathe. Realizing I wasn’t alone. Realizing I was blessed. I wished that Giles and Wendy and Xander and heck, even Spike’s guy were there so I could say thank you in a way that wasn’t condescending or perfunctory.

 

I called Giles in the morning and told him I was ready to meet with the Council. He was overwhelmingly relieved. I hadn’t realized just how much pressure he’d been under and what it had taken for him to hold them off until I came round.

 

He’s been pulling a Spike, he knew I’d be fine if he gave me time.

 

I thought Spike should be included in the meeting, seeing as how his intel and his plan had been critical, but both Spike and Giles set me straight in a quick minute. Spike was the one who got the intel that foiled the Council’s plan and put the Slayer lineage in danger. (that was how they saw it) It had the potential to cause a dangerous rift between the Tribunal and Council. Giles would be crucified for going against the Council plan in favor of the vampire’s. He had actively taken part in a plot that was beyond risky in every direction and by Council perspective, it was sheer luck that things hadn’t gone 5 kinds of sideways, and they hadn’t lost the Slayer AND the line. There would be NO mention of Spike.

 

The meeting started with scoldings and warnings, and no acknowledgment of the crack team who pulled off this amazing feat. Basically, we were being told we’d been very naughty children, I lost it. Fuck them.

 

“I exercised my right of refusal,” I cut the lead investigator off mid-sentence. “You were going to use the tracer to take me out. I didn’t like the plan so I removed the tracer. You wanted the Slayer line saved, and we saved it. I don’t see the problem.”

 

The incident caused a split, not only between me and the Council but within the Council itself. Some members held the position that Giles and I should have come to them with the proposed plan and worked together. Some members held that we’d shown great initiative, and bravery, to accomplish what we had and that the Council should be more open to utilizing our intel, smarts, and power on behalf of the mission for the remainder of my Slayer gig.

 

It was pretty clear that we were going to do what we were going to do, so there was no point in fighting with us. They couldn’t reasonably fault a Slayer, whose only transgression had been to save her own life along with doing her job. I’d proven my commitment to the cause and my willingness to do what it took. Were they really going to hold it against me that I’d lived to tell about it?

 

Xander had a difficult time following the Ovid incident (that is what the Council called it. “Incident” giving the impression that it was something distasteful. Personally I like to think of it as the Ovid Triumph!) The fact that the plan depended on the intel of a vampire and we had to call in the vampire’s “guy” hit him hard. On top of that, was what felt like, his personal loss of me, to Spike.

 

I don’t want this to sound like a case of wounded male ego because it went deeper than being shown up by a vampire. Xander needed to move on with his life. He was in college and making his plans for the future. He’d been hanging around because he felt like he was an important part of the crew, and now it looked like that wasn’t so much the case. If he wasn’t needed here, he had places to be and things to do, both professionally and personally that didn’t involve us. At the same time, he didn’t want to leave us if we really needed him.

 

Nothing Xander did at the fissure that day couldn’t have been done by Spike had he been present. If all Xander had on Spike was happening to be there when Spike was not, that didn’t seem like much of a reason to stay.

 

I’d like to say that none of us felt that way about Xander and that we had a laundry list of reasons he should stay that were solid and convincing, but that would only be half true. We did value Xander as part of the team. We depended on his reliability and commitment. That makes it sound like we valued him the way you value a good mechanic. That is how it sounded to Xander as well.

 

The most important reason we didn’t try overly hard to get Xander to stay was because we realized that he did need to create a nonSlayer related life for himself. We loved him, but you don’t ask a friend to put his life on hold just because he’s convenient to have around. Giles was sworn as a Watcher and would have Council related work until he was retired. Wendy was going to continue to study sorcery and if she excelled and cared to, she too could be employed as a Council sorcerer.

 

I HAD to put the mission first. Even if I retired into civilian life in two years, I was going to have to play catch up, it was simply the way it worked. Giles told me that there was talk among our supporters in the Council about keeping me on as a mentor. Now that Slayers had a better shot at survival (they were nothing if not optimistic) having a former Slayer work with a newbie was worth considering.

 

I vacillated hourly as to whether, on my 22nd birthday I wanted to change my name, cut and color my hair and move to the other side of the planet to take up the bongos or to become an advisor and get a university degree paid for by the Council.

 

I felt a little guilty for how often I, patronizingly, thought that Xander should find himself a nice girl and settle down. I played that fantasy often in my head. It helped me address my unspoken question, what would it have been like if that girl was ME? It never would be. We might have gotten back into step if Xander hadn’t walked in that morning and seen Spike half undressed in my room. That sealed the deal. Nothing says, “you’re too ordinary for me” like sleeping with a vampire.

 

Council therapy didn’t extend to civilians. Xander wasn’t receiving any counseling to help sort himself out. He wanted to be convinced that he was critical to our cause but we loved him too much to tell him that if we didn’t think it was 100% true.

 

****************

 

Q&A

 

Why was Wendy's name changed to Willow? What are differences between the real Wendy and Buffy's best friend on the show? 

Wendy the Witch is already a “character”. She has her own comic book and everything! So...that wasn’t going to happen. She liked the name Willow and was very pleased that they chose it.

In a lot of ways, she IS like the character Willow, but her home life is completely different. The writers on the show wanted to keep parental involvement on the show minimal, so Willow’s parents are basically MIA, Wendy isn’t an only child and her parents are really warm and loving.

Other differences...she never dated a werewolf. She never became a magic addict, but she did do a few wacky spells. Wendy loved school and learning, and it was the same with sorcery. She wanted to learn everything she could from whomever she could, so she never really went off half cocked.

She wasn’t ever what I would call nerdy. She came from this nice open family so she wasn’t really shy either.

Her family, on her mother’s side, came from a back round that many people would call superstitious...but we know there’s more to it than that. This helped her when she first got involved with sorcery in that there was an acknowledgment that those things existed, but it also led to there being a lot of fear that she was messing with things that are better left alone. So there was some friction with her family over her sorcery.

Also, coming from a fairly big family, she has this lovely generosity, she’s used to sharing and loving people, but she is also quite private. I felt like I used to dump on her a lot. She knew all my secrets, but I never knew all of hers. Part of that was because I was such a needy self-centered spaz, and part of it was because that’s just the way she is.

She likes to think about things and process them on her own, plus I guess you value your privacy more when you live with a lot of people and have nosy little brothers and sisters. She didn’t exactly keep secrets from me. She just has a tendency not to share a lot. Sometimes I think she also just forgets to tell people things. (a habit of people who live in their head a lot) Even today, sometimes I won’t hear big news from her till a year or two later because she thought she’d already told me.

 

You mentioned that Spike loved but let down his human family. Can you give us a bit more info about what happened?

The situation surrounding Spike being turned was pretty weird. He didn’t actually believe in vampires. He thought the “society” of Goth gentlemen he got involved with were basically a bunch of drug using, looney tunes, self-indulgent men.

He DID choose to associate, party with and work for them, so he doesn’t count himself blameless, but he never asked for or anticipated actually being turned into a vampire.

He was pissed off at his Dad and older brother and was sowing his oats and doing a “you can’t tell me what to do, I have other options” thing. He never intended it to be an eternal rebellion, he just wanted to have some fun, make some wealthy connections and prove he was his own man to his family.

So, yeah, he knew he was being an asshole at the time, and he didn’t much care. He figured that as long as he didn’t get caught out in public, he wasn’t going to break his mother’s heart or lose his father’s respect, but he also got drawn in more deeply than he anticipated into the nefarious doings of “The Society”.

He wasn’t raised that way, and he was ashamed, but he was also having a lot of fun and getting away with it. Spike’s tendency is toward being strong willed, proving he’s right and getting away with things. Time and experience have mellowed him but when he was a young man...not so much.

He said his father had already dragged him home by his ear and given him some stern warnings before he was turned, but in a way that just made him want to rebel more. Especially since his father said he would never tell Spike’s mother because it would break her heart.

Then he got turned, and he was like an animal. He needed his dean to protect him, but he also had power and hungers that he hadn’t had before, and not much of a conscience. He felt ashamed of much of what he did, but that didn’t keep him from doing it. It felt too damn good, and he needed to “work” to stay under the protection of his dean, and the “work” he did was stealing and kidnapping people, and whatever else he was told to.

He still loved his family, but he was off the rails and he was a vampire. He didn’t see his family at all for over a year after he was turned because he was just a mess. Once he learned to deal a little with being a vampire, he went to see them, of course never telling them what he was. But things got more and more out of control, and when he was involved in that plot to kill his dean, who was a prominent man, and his family had already been threatened, he left for good.

He felt like, and I guess he was right, he didn’t deserve them. He’d gone against everything he was taught (other than the value of hard work) and even though it was a blow to them to have a son run off and get involved in bad business, it was better than staying around and continuing to disgrace the family name.

He never actually disliked his family. He didn’t kill any of them, though he was disgusted, a few decades later, to find out that his younger brother had become a drunkard and run up family debts. Spike left a one-time gift of money with his brother’s wife, but he guesses that his brother probably squandered that too.

It’s not like Spike had ANY moral high ground on which to judge his brother, but there it is.

He thinks enough time has passed that it won’t serve to identify his family, and this is something he always thought was fun. He had two younger sisters, who were actually the living survivors of a birth of triplets. Of course, people who met them always referred to them as twins, but they would always correct them and insist they were triplets.

At that time in society things like pregnancy, birth and death were usually spoken of in public with euphemism and hushed tones, so it was rather shocking that the girls did that, but as long as he knew them and heard news of them, they always referred to themselves as triplets.

 

Though he didn’t ask to be turned into a vampire, he says it’s the direct consequences of the choices and lifestyle he was living and doesn’t count himself blameless. He regrets the pain it brought on his family, and he’s not proud of many things he’s done, but he says it’s been an adventure that he wouldn’t give back.


	18. The One Where I Get Real With People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy considers the value of family and tries a little tenderness

The One Where I Get Real With People

 

Spike was back, but he looked like hell and felt just as badly. He needed to feed (that’s what we call his need for blood, as opposed to a craving for a cheeseburger) Feeding is nonnegotiable for vampires. They have to have blood of some sort or they suffer from malnutrition which leads to violent behavior and predation. That is how I met the local butcher, I went in and asked if it was possible to buy blood and lo and behold it was. It’s not something you can buy at the local supermarket, but most butchers will get it for you. Special orders don’t come cheap, and I can’t tell you money was no object. This wasn’t an expense I could put on the Council’s tab.

 

Spike told me he’d repay me, but that didn’t help with footing the bill up front. Waking up next to a yellow vampire was incentive to part with my clothing allowance. His nervewrackingly slow and shallow breathing and the slightly wild look in his eyes were two more compelling reasons. Lack of sex drive sealed the deal. No blood meant no erections.

 

While he was under the weather Spike taught me how to play backgammon. He talked to me about his life both pre and post turning. He wisely refrained from telling me about his not so warm and fuzzy encounters with previous Slayers.

 

On a diet of beef and lamb’s blood, he perked up in a couple of days. The bruising went away, but he still had a yellow thing going on which wasn’t a good look on him. I bugged him about it and he was evasive, so I asked Wendy to do some research and we found out it was due to lack of human blood. Vampires need it to fully rejuvenate.

 

His condition could have been caused by a number of things, but human blood was pretty much the cure. Yeah, you know where I am going with this. I didn’t offer right away because, yuck, but Spike’s yellow skin seriously wigged me, his hands had a slight tremor and he had a shifty look in his eye.

 

He was drinking his tea one morning, a few days after his return, and his eyes were looking off into a distant horizon that didn’t exist in my kitchen. I was pretty sure he was thinking about skipping town and finding someone to eat. I didn’t want to have to stake him, but by now that goes without saying.

 

Sick Spike meant there hadn’t been any orgasms for either of us. There’d been no sex therapy to get Buffy happy to be in her body again. The fifth night of yellow Spike I woke up from a nightmare of having to stake him. The bed was damp. He’d been sweating.

 

“Spike.” I gave him a little shake, but I knew he wasn’t sleeping. He’d been having nightmares of his own.(I think they also involved me having to stake him) “I’ve been thinking. You need human blood.” His only response was his maddeningly shallow breathing. “Maybe you should have some of mine.”

 

I swear to you, I could hear him close his eyes, slowly and painfully. He stopped breathing for a full minute at least. When he started breathing again he said in a low voice, “Not a good idea, Luv.”

 

“It will make you better.”

 

“So will the blood you’ve been bringing me, just takes longer.” I didn’t believe him.

 

“But..”

 

“No.”

 

It had the sound of finality, but I wasn’t about to give up. He was pissing me off now. Sometimes his take chargeyness was nice and a turn on, but I was NEVER ok with him completely shutting down my ideas.

 

“But it would help.”

 

“Yeah, it would help that one thing and make a mess too many others.”

 

“Like?”

 

“Like this.”

 

This, referred to us lying side by side safe and trusting, and his being in the house with my mother not pulling the crossbow on him. It referred to his loose cease fire with my Watcher, and, most importantly, me not feeling compelled to stake him. I’d seen vampires feed, I’d seen the victims afterward. Of course, I’d imagined what it would be like to see Spike doing that, and it disturbed me, I won’t lie.

 

“I sort of owe you.” It came out in my little girl voice but the foot I put in my mouth was wearing a plus size loafer. Using the word “owe” had thrown it all back in his face as if we were a business arrangement. He knew it was just me being stupid, but my words hit him like a punch. I felt him flinch.

 

“You don’t owe me. You will NEVER owe me.” It was anger I heard in his voice, not hurt. The addendum, which he did not say but I heard loud and clear, was “And I never want to owe you.”

 

I immediately sensed my faux pas. I wanted to fix this. I wanted to tell him that I would do it because I loved him, but it was too late, I’d already used the word “owe”. 

 

I nearly said I wanted to do it because I couldn’t stand to see him this way. Nothing like a little emotional blackmail to manipulate the vampire. Burst into tears and he’ll give you anything you want.

 

I decided that kissing didn’t qualify as emotional blackmail. Kissing was saying, “I want to do it because I want more of this.” Us huddled in bed together, us making love. I wanted those things, not some smug sense of satisfaction for having repaid a debt. I wanted more of him, not to see the back of him as he took leave of me at the completion of a business deal. Didn’t he want this too?

 

I kissed him, and he kissed me back, arms winding around me to pull me close, to show me just how much I didn’t owe him. It hadn’t started that way, but I quickly realized that this might be the perfect coercion. I needed to remind him how much a few orgasms would make him happy to be back in his healthy body.

 

“I don’t want you to see me like that. For us to be like that,” he admitted when our lips parted.

 

“I know what you are. I’m the Slayer remember? I KNOW about vampires. I know YOU’RE a vampire.”

 

“No, you don’t. Not like that.”

 

“It won’t stop me...” There was that pesky word again, love, it nearly came tumbling out of my mouth, “... wanting to be with you.” I made a quick recovery.

 

He stopped breathing again. He knew what I had been about to say. “I’ll take care of it another way.” His tone made it clear that he was done talking about it.

 

I wasn’t. “You’re not going to?” I was whispering now.

 

This time he kissed me, to remind me what we were missing. He said he would take care of it, and he wanted me to trust that he would.

 

“Ok,” I said when our lips parted. I was still worried around the edges, but I was willing to put it to rest for the night.

 

Spike timed his exit to coincide with Dawn’s weekend home. I wasn’t sure where he was going but I decided to trust him.

 

I don’t think it was only the sex issue that made my mother leery of him hanging around when Dawn was home. She knew I was safe with Spike, that we were ALL safe with him, it was his methodology that concerned her. We were under his protection, but it was clear he could be ruthless towards anyone who challenged him. Maybe that was a commendable trait in a Slayer’s boyfriend, but it wasn’t a great example for my little sister.

 

Dawn was impressed that I’d learned to play backgammon and we played several games. She was puzzled by the new set, it seemed a rather odd and extravagant gift from someone who was not Buffy’s boyfriend.

 

She said I mostly seemed like myself again. Mom was less frazzled until the hospital bill arrived. It was larger than the mortgage on our house. She assumed that the Council would refuse to cover it, given the circumstances, but I assured her they would pay. If they didn’t there was going to be a whole lot of “right of refusal” going on.

 

Dawn wanted me to return to LA with her, and stay for a few days. My dad would love to see me doing so well now that I was out of the hospital and pretty much my old self again. I didn’t want to leave with the jury still out on Spike.

 

“Maybe I can come later this week. Give me a few days to get my stuff together.”

 

“Mom won’t let you drive. Come now when Dad picks me up, please, please, please?”

 

I looked to my mother, I was sure she knew what was on my mind, but she wouldn’t meet eyes with me. It was her way of saying I was on my own with this one. Time to set my priorities, errant vampire who came and went as he pleased or sister and father?

 

 

Of course, Dawn had caught me looking to my mother for help. “Is this about Spike?” Her tone clearly one of frustration. “I get the whole being in love part, but come on Buffy, you haven’t been to LA in like forever, ergo, dad will take us to amazing places to eat, give us money to shop and it will be super fun.”

 

Everything she said was true, with the possible exception of it being super fun. If I was worrying about Spike that part might be shaky.

 

“Go,” my mom said, deciding to step in after all.

 

I didn’t use the offending word “owe” but I DID owe her, big time, for everything she’d been through. She deserved several days of the house to herself, with no Slayer drama and no Spike.

 

“I’ll go pack.”

 

LA was fun. Everything Dawn had predicted came true. Seeing how easily she related to Dad reminded me of how easily I had once related to him, and helped me ease back into it. By the third day, we were all laughing and joking as if we hadn’t lived apart for years.

 

I was worried about Spike but forced myself to not ask my mom about him when we spoke. Dawn, of course, pressed me for details, about how we met, how we got involved, did I think we’d get married and all the things you would expect a sister to ask about a normal relationship. My deer in the headlights look led her to finally just blurt it out, “Are you two just fuck buddies?”

 

OK, not loving to hear the term “fuck buddies” coming out of my 16 yr old sister’s mouth. REALLY not liking that she thought that I had one, and sort of freaked that she thought mom would be on board with that situation.

 

On the other hand, what exactly did my mom think Spike and I were? Maybe she also thought Spike and I were “fuck buddies” but since I was old enough to make my own decisions she was doing her best to accept it.

 

Dawn saw me worrying over the term and said, “And don’t you dare tell me it’s complicated because that’s the lamest.”

 

Damn, that had been exactly what I was going to say. “I really like him,” I said instead.

 

“That’s the second lamest.”

 

“Well, he lives far away and I’m not sure I want a long distance relationship.” HA! That sounded mature and cool and not lame at all. She looked at me suspiciously, trying to find a hole in that statement and decided it was air tight. “Are you in love with him?”

 

Damn little sisters! They were as bad as moms but had none of the tact. OK Buffy, think of something quick, something that sounds mature and cool. “I think so.” Third lamest?

 

“So it’s like that. You don’t know if he loves you back.” Wow, for someone so young she was good.

 

“No. I don’t know.”

 

“Have you asked him?”

 

“It’s not the kind of thing you just ask a person.” Duh, now her age was showing.

 

“You should talk to mom, she’s really good with relationship advice.”

 

Hold on, since when and WHY was my little sister going to mom for relationship advice. Wasn’t that what big sisters were for? Not that I could blame her for going to mom instead, my track record was pretty pathetic.

 

“Yeah, mom is great,” I agreed weakly. The details and status of my relationship with Spike were something I didn’t talk with mom about, mostly because I didn’t want her to tell me I was being stupid.

 

Not only was I in love with a vampire but I had offered to open a vein for him. How many flavors of stupid was that?

 

I truly enjoyed my time with my father. I realized I had done to him, what I had done to my mother years ago. I let my role as Slayer keep me from being a daughter to him. He’d never actually stopped wanting to be my father, it was more a case of me not letting him. I wasn’t going to tell him I was the Slayer, or divulge any other of my secrets, neither of us was ready for that, but I could tell him that I loved him, and know I meant it.

 

I had mentally categorized him as a middle-aged guy who covers his gray hair and sucks in his gut hoping to find a girlfriend. Did he DO those things? Yeah, sometimes, but that didn’t mean it was who he was. The first two days together both he and I were acting clumsy around each other. Then I realized it wasn’t because he didn’t love me, it was because he did, but he didn’t know how to package it in a way I would accept.

 

Turns out he and I have the same way of expressing awkward. I recognized catches in his voice and expressions on his face that mirrored my own when I’d said or done something with the best intentions and made a hash of it. I felt suddenly close to him. I wanted him to know that it was OK, that I didn’t hold every little thing against him. So I did the Spike thing, and let things slide by, knowing he just needed the time and opportunity to get over himself. In a few days, we felt like family again.

 

“Recover” isn’t the same as “Get Over”. It doesn’t bring you back to point A so you can give life another shot as if the thing that happened never happened.

 

I wasn’t the same Slayer after Ovid. My relationship with my Slayer-self felt totally redefined. My partnership with the Council was definitely altered. We needed to hash out a new agreement, and new parameters for what constituted “needs to know”.

 

The crew had changed. We had never needed to call in help that wasn’t Council related before. Xander felt expendable. Wendy’s experience was the opposite of Xander’s. She felt even more important and dedicated, to the mission. Working with Oscar had excited and thrilled her. Giles had to evaluate his Watcher’s vow, and what it meant that he’d sided with Buffy, rather than the Council.

 

We definitely all needed time to decompress, but none of us were returning to the way things were before. We didn’t need to get over it, we needed to integrate it.

 

I wasn’t the same daughter after Ovid. I realized my parents were more wonderfully human than I’d given them credit for. I also realized that the important thing about Dawn and I was that we were sisters, not who played the role of big sis and who played little sis. We each had things to learn and teach each other, we each had things to share.

 

Originally, I had every intention of finishing the school semester with good grades and on time, but it didn’t work out. I’d lost too much time to catch up, and even though the crisis was over, I found I couldn’t concentrate. 

 

I could have taken incompletes in both my classes. It would have allowed me to finish them at a later date, but I knew I wouldn’t want to. I wanted to start fresh with a new semester and new classes and not ones that would remind me too much of the way I felt surrounding Ovid.

 

Instead, I took a medical withdrawal. It felt like a cop out, and I felt like a failure. Dawn was getting academic accolades on top of her wacked out busy schedule of rehearsals and performances. It doesn’t matter whether or not your parents compare you to your siblings, you do it to yourself.

 

Sometimes I soothed my ego by reminding myself she’d probably get a D- in demon kickboxing, you know, if it was a class. Sigh

 

Spike showed up a few days after my return from LA. He was looking like himself again, very handsome, with some new clothes, his complexion vampire pale but not a hint of yellow or blue, and from the way he kissed me it was clear his sexual interest was back to its usual lusty level.

 

He greeted my mother with a kiss to her cheek, and it earned him a raised eyebrow, but she didn’t think it was just a lame attempt to charm her. We’d been through something, and he and she had a genuine respect and appreciation for each other. I won’t go as far as saying they had an affection, but his kiss, was his old world way of showing what he felt.

 

“I assume he’s staying over,” she said to me.

 

“If that’s OK.”

 

“And if it’s not?” She had me there. I didn’t have a plan B and Spike didn’t have, as far as I knew, a place to take me. I guess we could have signed in as Mr. and Mrs. Smith at the local motel.

 

“Is is too much? I mean, he’s been here kind of a lot.” Actually, only a few days strung together each time, with reasonable absences in between, but I could see how it could be getting oppressive, or maybe just weird. Like we were his very convenient lodgings when he was in on business.

 

“How long is this going to go on?” she asked as if I might actually know.

 

“We don’t really have…I don’t think he’s planning to stay and if he does he would…find a place.” I realized as I was saying this, that I had no actual idea how long he would stay and if he WOULD find a place. Certainly, he knew he couldn’t move into our place. That wasn’t his style, and he was way too perceptive and way too possessive, to crash at my mother’s house just to shack up with me. If this went on much longer that would be the vibe. We were getting close to having to make a decision and not let life decide for us.

 

“So you two don’t have a plan or a status?” She was watching me carefully. She really wanted to know the answer, but she was just as concerned for me, and how I felt about our relationship. I was hoping her worst fears about it weren’t true, but I wasn’t certain and I didn’t want to ask.

 

“But it’s ok if he stays tonight?”

 

She nodded. “Do you know where he was?” Of course, she had noticed how badly he looked when he showed up two weeks ago and how much better he looked now.

 

“Not yet.” I wondered if she had a suspicion that he’d been off feeding. My mother knew very little about vampires. She didn’t ask much and I had never filled her in, what with the “needs to know” thing and all. She knew it was true that they killed and drank blood, and that I had been supplying Spike from the butcher.

 

She knew Angel a reformed vampire who’d given up ripping throats open, and it was fair to assume that anyone working closely with me and the crew was likewise on the up and up...but she had her suspicions about Spike. He was clearly nothing like Angel and operated on his own rules and time schedule. But she also trusted that I wouldn’t get involved with a bloodthirsty killer.

At least she had once trusted that. Seeing me with Spike, and the way he behaved I think she was less certain. She was no longer sure that I wouldn’t fall under the spell of a handsome, charming man who showed interest in me and was a firecracker in bed.

 

I told Spike that I had brought up the subject of his staying with my mother, and mentioned how I’d not considered before how my dating life (yes I was hoping to get a reaction out of him at my use of that word) affected her.

 

“To say nothing of how your being the Slayer affects her dating life.”

 

Self-centered much Buffy? I had moaned and groaned about how it affected my dating, never giving a thought to what it did to my mom’s, and that going without a boyfriend for the duration of my gig was quite a sacrifice. Not that she couldn’t have a boyfriend, but the odds weren’t in either of our favors for a happy relationship let alone a normal one. There was too much to explain and even more that couldn’t be explained. At best they would think we were eccentric and possibly insane, at worst we could be reported for things that even the Council might not be able to get us out of.

 

“She’s gone on a few dates, but she’s never brought anyone home.”

 

“I don’t imagine having a vampire hanging round helps with that.”

 

“Not as bad as having a daughter who is regularly injured and beaten. I guess we could explain the weapons as having some fascination with medieval combat. Maybe I should move out.”

 

“Maybe you should relax, you told me you’ve had that conversation with her.”

 

“Many times, but maybe she just didn’t want to say anything.”

 

“Maybe she knows her own mind and you could give her some credit yeah? Not everyone avoids difficult conversations.”

 

“Are you saying I do?”

 

“Are you saying you don’t?” He grinned at me.

 

“I don’t want it to hurt her. It’s not fair.”

 

“Come on, Luv, you’re past all that, so is your mum.”

 

“What about you?” Hey, since he was all about people speaking their minds.

 

“You’re being Slayer doesn’t hurt me.” He looked at me as if I was insane.

 

Maybe hurt was the wrong word but surely it must affect him.

 

“What about your position with the Tribunal?”

 

He gave a lazy wave of his hand. “It’s a cycle, I go my own way, and at some point, they require my services again.”

 

“They don’t hold grudges?”

 

“Only as long as they serve their purpose. Grudges have a sell-by date, and if you hang onto them longer they go bad.”

 

He had an answer for everything. He took my hands, “Come on, don’t you think it’s time we said hello good and proper?” His grin turned into a kiss, turned into his hands sliding over my back, one moving up, one moving down.

 

Here I was about to get it on with my vampire and my mom was probably watching television or reading a book in her room. No point in both of us going without, I thought to myself, but I was nervous too. This was all still fresh, patient and ardent as Spike was we’d only had sex a few times, and I wanted him so much it scared me.

 

“So you’re going to make me glad I’m back in my body?” I recalled how he assured me orgasms would help.

 

“We’re both going to be glad to be back in your body,” he said between kisses, not caring that he made me blush.

 

“And we’re going to do it face to face?” He’d promised.

 

“Come on Luv, not this time, it’s been bloody forever.” He sounded more like a boy than I’d ever heard him. Mom, can I stay out and play just TEN more minutes?

 

“So you’re going to show me something new?” I gathered.

 

“Maybe later tonight. For now, just let me…” His hand was sliding into my pants. I felt a prickle of disquiet, which seemed ill placed. What was the big if I had a quickie with Spike just so he could get past the worst of his erectile cramp? Our first time together had been a quickie, at least that’s all it was ever meant to be. But here we were. So what was this?

 

In a second I was past caring. I craved him just as much. We hadn’t had sex for weeks, not since the night before I sent him away. Now it was over and I wanted nothing more than to forget everything and have this, be lost in it and surrounded by it and to feel that mad sense of belonging.

 

I felt like I was careening through a tunnel that was my own body, rushing into it, my ears filling with the sound of his breathing and his stream of conscious babble as he undressed us and arranged us and rammed into me. We did it doggy style again, and it was as crazy good as it had been the first time.

 

When he was done, he pulled me down beside him and gnawed at my shoulder roughly enough that I squirmed and said “ouch.”

 

He was right, I was glad to be in my body, I wouldn’t have wanted to miss that, but ahem, hadn’t there been talk of orgasms? Of MY orgasms? I felt testy with him, he wasn’t doing a stellar job of taking care of me here.

“Spike.”

 

He bit me again and growled.

 

“Spike!”

 

“Give me a blasted minute Buffy, I can’t think straight.”

 

I smiled, it was kind of cute that sex with me had rattled his cage that much. The next thing I remember was his asking if I was awake.

 

“No.”

 

“Do you want to be?”

 

“Is it going to require effort on my part?”

 

“Do you want it to?” I could hear the sly in his tone.

 

My own smile curled my lips.

 

“You won’t want to miss this,” he assured me, “but if you’re too tired…”

 

“Why are we always on your schedule?” I asked, rising to my elbows to check the clock.

 

“Because it takes more out of me. It’s more work on my end.”

 

“I can’t believe you just said that.” I was affronted.

 

“Why? It’s the truth.”

 

It irked me because I could see how he might be right. My lack of experience was no excuse for lack of effort, even if he had been pleased to take the lead.

 

“I’m not complaining Luv, but I’d be happy to lay here and let you do all the work.” He wasn’t kidding either.

 

OK, maybe that was more than I could handle, it was certainly more than I had anticipated. I knew that he wouldn’t think I was stupid for my lack of experience, but I knew I would. I would be mortified if I did things wrong. I hadn’t yet learned the knack of getting over myself.

 

But then, this wasn’t about me, at least it didn’t have to be. The other night when I’d rubbed his aching muscles, it had been wonderful to know I was making him feel good, and doing something for him that he could not do for himself. I could take care of him, just like he took care of me.

 

He had enjoyed my hands on his skin, so that was the place to start. I could kiss him, and explore him, and even as I thought about it I wanted to and began to.

 

“Sometimes it’s nice to be done to.” I recall him saying, and I recall the sounds he made as he got turned on, his muscles tensing and flexing beneath his skin. He encouraged me with words and his firm hands over mine. It was so erotic, feeling and tasting his reactions.

 

He was right, it was work. The nicest sort of work, but it took some thinking, and energy, and focus that it didn’t take when he slipped into me from behind and fucked me while he kissed my neck and fiddled with my breasts.

 

When I’d finished with him he said “Well?”

 

“Wel, what? Aren’t you supposed to be the one rating me on a scale of one to ten or something?” I took the tissues from him and dropped them over the side of the bed in the general direction of the wastebasket.

 

“Not talking about rating, just want to know what you thought?”

 

“I liked making you feel that way.”

 

“It’s very nice the way you make me feel.”

 

“You’re so strong, but I felt like I had power over you.”

 

“You did, for a bit there I would have given you all my world and then some just so you wouldn’t stop.”

 

Then it was my turn and he moved over me with lips and hands and it was me who made encouraging noises and helped him along with my hands firm over his.

 

After I came, we fucked, face to face.

 

“Promised you, didn’t I,” he said as he was pumping into me.

 

“This isn’t boring.”

 

“Maybe not, but it’s hard to move.”

 

I could see his point.

 

He stopped after a bit and pulled out. “I’m knackered,” he announced, just like that. I nearly laughed. Imagine that! I’d worn the big bad vampire out.

 

He kissed me. “Good night, Luv,” he said sleepily.

 

I was sorry if anything I said or did denied my mother of this. I didn’t control the Powers That Be, there was little I could do to minimize blowback for the people around me, but what I could do, I should.

 

Still, me going without Spike in my bed wouldn’t put a man in hers. (and I’m pretty sure she didn’t want a vampire)

 

*********************************

 

Q&A 

Buffy, did you ever let Spike feed off of you?

Stay tuned.

 

How does Spike earn a living when he’s not working for the Tribunal?

Some of this comes up in the story, but it’s not a big spoiler so I’ll dish a little. Spike’s father ran a business and Spike and his brothers worked with him, so he has good business sense and his first many years as a vampire he perfected working in the shady side of the business as well.

Spike is a self-professed con man, but he doesn’t con people (or other beings) out of money. He prefers to earn it or steal it outright. He cuts deals and calls in favors if he’s in a pinch, but most of the time he has some kind of underworld wheeling and dealing going on, on top of his emissary work.

When I say underworld I’m referring to the supernatural. He’s involved in interdimensional trade and smuggling. We’re not talking about a moral gray area here, it’s more like a moral striped, plaid and polka dotted area.

Take the crucifix for instance. He borrowed it without permission. It was pressed into service, unharmed, to save the Slayer line. Do the ends justify the means? They did as far as Spike was concerned.

There are certain items in other dimensions that have uses in ours, that are tightly controlled by the dimension of origin. Spike will import those certain items, sometimes through legitimate business deals, and sometimes by smuggling or stealing them and selling them here.

Am I making it sound like a whole lot of I don’t care? I care, but...both Spike and I have risked our lives repeatedly in supernatural warfare, I don’t get overly worked up if he pays for my Christmas present or electric bill by trafficking what amounts to interdimensional superglue. When I say super, I mean SUPER!

Sometimes I ask him if anyone is likely to die from what he’s doing in a particular business dealing. Most of the time his response is “Yeah, me if I get caught.”

That being said, even a lot of the business he does over dimensional boundaries is on the up and up. He’s following the business etiquette of whichever worlds he’s working for, but seeing as what they pay him in doesn’t convert easily to US dollars...he often has to smuggle the payment into another dimension that WILL pay him in something he can exchange for money here.

He says a lot of the time it’s the same guys peddling the same “borrowed” goods back and forth over dimensional boundaries. Once he carried the same lot of emeralds back and forth between our earth dimension and several others 6 times in 2 years.

Emeralds are accepted currency in a number of dimensions. They are also really pretty. After hearing so much about them he showed them to me, and now I have one for my very own.

 

Buffy, it sounds like most vampires are men. Is that true? And if so, why?

Most vampires are men. It’s because most vampires turn other men, to do the sort of dirty vampire dealings they need them for. Cheap labor.

Some men turn their human female lovers so they can spend eternity together.

Apparently, vampire women don’t make very good sex slaves or forced laborers, and Spike says that frankly most of them are damn scary. He says there is a tribe of vampire Amazon women that has terrorized the Pacific Islands for centuries and has recently set up colonies in Europe and Asia. They want nothing to do with the Tribunal.

The Council confirms that and it’s a big worry.

Humanity still tends to be sexist and vampires are made from humans so there you have it. Spike has always preferred human lovers. Angel has always preferred vampire women, but he (according to Spike) is always whining about how he can’t control them.

Spike says he doesn’t necessarily prefer human women because they are easier to control, he says they are just nicer, and appreciate lovely things like home life, cream tarts, and emeralds.

Vampire women are insatiable and demanding and it gets tiresome having a partner that’s never satisfied for ten minutes running. These are all his words. I’ve met a few vampire women, and, at the risk of being sexist myself...they do seem to have a perpetual case of PMS. But it’s not like I’ve been impressed by most of the male vampires I’ve met either.

In general, vampires are unpleasant, violent and angry. The ones that I know that are decent company tend to be older (in vamp years), educated and work with the Tribunal. Spike says vampires come in all flavors, the same as people. He and I have agreed to disagree on that point.

While it seems like a good idea for a vampire to turn a human lover so they can be together forever, being turned changes a person, and you’re likely not going to end up with your same loved one plus immortality.

They WILL wake up insane and bloodthirsty, and it will take time and patience to get them past that. And there are no guarantees that they will make it through with a normal mentality, or that they will still want to be with you once they’ve calmed down a bit. They may well hate you for what you did to them, or decide they want someone different. Nothing is ever simple.

He knows of some lovely romantic success stories, but more often horror stories, however, for whatever reason, when the situation is turned, female vampires have a pretty good track record when it comes to turning their male lovers. It seems most of the time the man survives the change intact and the couple does well, at least for the first 25 years or so.

Considering all the physiological mojo involved, it isn’t really surprising that the genders react differently to being turned. It’s flipped with mermaids, most are female. Men don’t tend to make that change well.


	19. The One Where I Ask the Hard Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is that vampire going to stick around?

The One Where I Ask the Hard Questions

 

 

One thing about the television show that is, unfortunately, exactly like my real life was the amorphous “now what” that followed the completion of a huge battle.

 

On the show, they timed it so that the battle took place in the final episode of the season. The characters and viewers both had a few months off before it was time to take on the next bad guy.

 

I’m a viewer myself, and I always wondered what happened over those summer months. Sometimes we get a hint here or there but it’s rare that we truly get “the rest of the story”. I’ve already given you some of that. You already know that after a battle, we don’t all just dust ourselves off, eat pizza and fall asleep in front of the TV.

 

I wish I could dust myself off right here, congratulate myself for having given you more than the tv show did, and enjoy a few restful summer months. It would be great if things sorted themselves out and when we next saw each other, we were all in a good place. Sadly, the point of my story is to share the real deal, and to share my love affair with pain, otherwise known as, my relationship with Spike.

 

If you think the creators of the TV show are hard on relationships, that’s nothing compared to life itself. I would love to say that Buffy and the Vampire bought a condo in a very nice suburb of LA and lived happily ever after, or that they went to the wilds of Borneo and fought the demons that haunt those islands in the form of enchanted phosphorescent fungi. No can do.

 

I wasn’t done with my Slayer gig and Spike? Who the hell ever REALLY knew what was up with Spike and his mysterious agenda that was half schemes of his own making and half whatever he had conned the Tribunal into paying him to do?

 

I didn’t ask Spike if he was going to stay. I asked him “When are you leaving?”

 

I was proud of myself for showing such maturity and forward thinking. I wanted to show him that I knew what was what and had no foolish expectations. My plan was to open a dialogue that would allow us to define the status of our relationship and explore possibilities for the future.

 

His reply was, “Thursday.”

 

Wow. OK. This was one of those times when you’re tempted to ask “When were you planning on telling me?” Then you realize that maybe they weren’t planning on telling you at all. I knew better by that time, he wouldn’t have left without a word, but in that moment his answer felt sudden and sharp.

 

Spike gets off on being “Mystery Man”, but not with me. With me, Spike gets off on being known. As much fun as it is to be an enigma to the world at large, it’s more satisfying to know there is at least one person who truly gets you.

 

My asking Spike that question was indeed a sign that I “got” him. I knew he was going to leave and that there was no point in entertaining other possibilities. It wasn’t all about him, I was getting real with myself. What would a relationship with Spike even look like? If such a thing was possible, was I ready for it? Did I WANT it?

 

My encounters with Spike were intense and emotional. Coming from me, and the kind of life I had as the Slayer, THAT was saying something.

 

Even though Wendy and Oscar had gotten me metaphysically back in phase with myself, many aspects of Buffy were doing their version of a disco ball. I could lay back on my bed and watch my feelings and identities spinning and bouncing off the walls of my room.

 

I attributed many things to being the Slayer, that in hindsight were just the normal human stages of development. I was nearly 20 and riding the frustration of not being where I thought I should be and feeling very much like I needed to make some decisions for myself and buckle down. The teen years were behind me. I wasn’t a kid anymore, dammit.

 

The Ovid event had made me feel old, which I may have mistaken a time or two, for maturity. Post Ovid, I quietly believed that I was going to make it to 22. Giles warned me not to fall into the trap of thinking that because I’d survived the impossible, I was somehow invulnerable. I didn’t feel invulnerable, it almost felt like resignation.

 

It was like, ok Buffy, looks like you might actually survive the Slayer gig, better figure out a thing or two for yourself. I knew the hard work, and even the pain and fear weren’t behind me, but I knew that one day, they WOULD be behind me.

 

All my encounters with Spike were Slayer related. “We” didn’t exist outside of that. That’s not to say I didn’t believe my feelings for him were real and personal, but I did doubt they had a sustainable life outside of that crucible. Even if I blew past my shelf life as the Slayer, that didn’t ensure a future for Spike and myself. What we had was crazy intense, and 100% non-sustainable.

 

“Thursday?” I repeated. That was two days away.

 

“I could push it as late as Saturday.”

 

But what would be the point? We would just have two extra days to feel confused and sad that we were saying goodbye. 48 hours wouldn’t change anything or buy us any answers.

 

Funny thing was, that this time I was the one who was moving on. Yes, geographically, Spike was going to be the one headed out of town, but he was headed towards more of the same..whatever it was he always did. I was headed for a big, bright, shiny life.

 

I wasn’t a young girl who still needed his guidance, or needed him to tell me I was beautiful and strong. I had that now. He hadn’t saved my life twice, so I could die in the next iteration of the Slayer lottery, he’d saved it as a down payment on real life.

 

Spike didn’t like to be proven wrong. He had told me that if I hit 18 I was home free. He had made sure that neither the Council nor Ovid made a fool out of him. Spike saved me to prove a point, to evil, to himself and to ME. Dammit, Buffy, you’re going to make it! Mission accomplished.

 

I loved Spike. I loved what we had, but it was part of “THIS”. THIS was the only context in which I could envision anything like an ‘us’. I didn’t expect to stop loving him, but I thought that I would age out of him, the way I would age out of being the Slayer.

 

Our relationship was real and intense and necessary right now, but it would fade. It had to. My Slayer strength would diminish after I hit 22, it wouldn’t go away entirely, but it would recede. In my new found maturity, I believed my feelings for Spike were bound to follow the same path.

 

I didn’t ask him where he was going to go because I already knew he didn’t have an answer. He’d burned bridges these past two months, he wasn’t going to be welcomed back by the Tribunal with open arms. There were probably a number of places that weren’t going to be welcoming to him anymore.

 

I could see the tension around his eyes, and assumed it was related to the tedium and discomfort awaiting him when he left Collinsville in two days time. Where to go, what to do, how to get there. I imagined that his eyes were already focused on some far horizon, so I was surprised when I realized they were focused on me.

 

When I met his eyes, he smiled, not one of his usual smirks, not even a smile of amusement, it was a soft, private smile. He wasn’t miles away at all, he was here with me.

 

I had just come off the litany of “lasts” that had been the obsession my panicked mind the weeks before the Ovid showdown. Last meal, last ice cream, last time I would hug my sister. Now I was facing a “last” with Spike.

 

I didn’t feel like I would never see him again, but it would be our “last” for this particular incarnation of the Spike and Buffy hour. There wasn’t the pressure I had felt pre Ovid. I didn’t feel a need to make our remaining time together more intense or memorable. We’d hit those highs already. We couldn’t top them and didn’t’ need to. We had 48 hours of downtime, just to be...until we weren’t anymore.

 

Mostly, that was how I felt. I had moments of panic when I wanted to make him tell me all his secrets, everything he remembered of his boyhood. There were times when I felt secrets and confessions welling up inside me, threatening to boil over. He could see it in my eyes, and then he’d give me that soft personal smile, the smile that said “I’m already here with you. You already have me.” I didn’t need to lasso the time with ropes of words.

 

When I came upstairs that evening, he was dozing on my bed. He’d finished the first novel he had borrowed and was now working his way through a book that was a collection of essays on the concept of personhood in the computer age. He must have found it as hard going as I had, because he’d cast it aside for a nap, yet another page dog-eared.

 

Spike was sitting up against my headboard. I lay down and put my head in his lap. His hand automatically went running over my hair then rested on my shoulder. In another day this would be over. It would mark the end of Ovid. How could I not be happy to put that behind me?

 

I knew I loved him, but what did I love? The way he saved me? The way he touched me? Some dream or fantasy I had of him? Or was it this hand that rested against my shoulder that I loved?

 

The skin of his fingers was covered with a crazed pattern of minute scars, belying 160 years of workaday. His thumbnails were chewed to the quick. He never chewed any of his other nails, only the thumbs. I smiled at the patch of sparse, dark hair on the back of each of his fingers.

 

Rushing anything during these last hours, wouldn’t add to our time, it would take away from it. I didn’t want or need 4 more mind-blowing orgasms to remember him by, I wanted this, this knowing him and being known by him. Soon I might become unrecognizable to myself, and I would have this touch point. This was who I was, in that moment, with Spike.

 

I had decided not to tell my mother that he was leaving tomorrow. That was selfish of me, but I didn’t want to share my headspace with anyone. I didn’t want to deal with her reactions to his going, and more importantly, to her reactions to my reactions to his going.

 

He has a tiny scar at the left corner of his mouth. I sat up and kissed it, waking him. Spike gave me his quiet smile again, then looked at me with a naked pain that I hadn’t seen since that night at the coffee shop when he was trying to convince me that he was going to save me. It bordered on desperation, but in a second it had flickered out and he was pulling himself up to gather his things, in preparation for leaving.

 

“Buffy.” He turned to me. “Time that got home to its rightful owners.” He nodded to the crucifix. ”

 

“I can’t keep it?”

 

“If you really want to, suppose you can…” He was studying my face. “Has it got you thinking, you know, coming round to seeing things their way.”

 

“Are you asking me if I’m becoming a Catholic?” He was usually much more eloquent than that.

 

“Yeah.” He was watching me cautiously.

 

I guess he thought that if I turned Catholic, it would pretty much end things between the two of us. He gave the crucifix another worried glance. He couldn’t regret bringing me the relic that had brought me back to life, but it would be a sad sort of irony if it ended up taking me away from him.

 

“No,” I assured him. Relief transformed his features

 

I knew the crucifix didn’t belong to me. It belonged in the hands of the next person whose faith or fear would cause them to put their trust in it. I picked it up, kissed it and wrapped it in its silk. I pulled the elastic band out of my hair and fastened the silk tight, so it wouldn’t come loose and put Spike in danger.

 

He smiled as he watched me, his eyes dark and filled with admiration. He knew too, how things fall into place. How when the time comes we know how to do what we must do. He took the cross, but he didn’t pack it in the bag, he tucked it into his jacket pocket.

 

I wondered what he would do with it. Would he return it to wherever he’d “borrowed” it from? Or would he use it to buy himself passage, since it was likely the Tribunal had pulled his papers? Maybe it was already part of another scheme or plot that he’d conjured months before he’d returned to Collinsville, and he was just picking up where he’s left off. Anything was possible in vampire time.

 

I picked up the paperback and handed it to him to put among his things. He chuckled. “No thank you, Luv, I’m traveling light.”

 

He didn’t ask for anything to remember me by and I didn’t offer. I didn’t ask for anything of his either. We were both planning to travel light.

 

“Can I ask you something?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“Do you have other women, you know, where you’re going?”

 

He gave me a wearied look. “Can I amend that to where you can’t ask me stupid questions?”

 

That stung a bit, but I could see his point. Of course, he had women. He hadn’t been waiting around for me, and he wouldn’t be this time either.

 

“Are there many?”

 

His frown was answer enough.

 

“Are they like me?” Even as I said it, I realized it could be taken so many ways. Are they young and naïve? Are they in love with you? Are you in love with them? Do they wonder if you’ll ever come back? Do you tell them not to wait?

 

He studied me for a moment. I waited, figuring he was considering what to say. What was the diplomatic thing to say to a young woman when you were about to exit her bed, and her life? Then I recalled who I was dealing with. Vampire?…Diplomacy? Well, he DID work for the Tribunal, surely he had an ace or two of tact up his sleeve.

 

“Which question do you want me to answer first?” He came to me.

 

Technically there was only that one question on the table, at the time. He must have heard the wheels in my head turning, or my heart breaking.

 

“You know I don’t care to sleep alone.”

 

“You know that’s not what I’m asking.”

 

He called me Luv, all the time, but we’d never said the word love. Maybe he called everyone Luv.

 

“You want to know if they’re young and pretty? Yeah, some of them are.”

 

I waited, wondering if he was drawing this out on purpose, the better to skewer me. I already knew none of them were Slayers, what with me being the only one. It was unlikely any of them were named Buffy. It’s not that common. Had he saved any of their lives? Most likely, he was chivalrous that way.

 

Finally, he said to me, “No, they’re not like you.”

 

I waited, if ever there was a pregnant pause, this was it.

 

“They’re convenient.”

 

Either I’d just been told I was a royal pain in the ass or he’d told me I was worth the effort.

 

His eyes and expression filled in the blanks. He wasn’t with me because I was convenient. He was with me because he wanted to be with ME.

 

I wanted to feel overjoyed, but mostly I just felt relieved. If he’d gone out of his way to be with me twice, it could happen again. Right? Buffy, Buffy, Buffy, don’t be stupid, you cannot wait for him. You cannot put your life on hold just because he wants you now. He might want something completely different by next week.

 

“I don’t like it any better, thinking of you with other blokes.”

 

He never asked, and I never told if there’d been others besides him, and I certainly wasn’t going to say anything now. Let him squirm, thinking about me in bed with another man.

 

“So, was it true what you told me? That I ruined you for other men?” There was enough of a waver in his tone, that I knew he was fishing for assurances.

 

“The jury is still out. There are lots of things we haven’t done yet.”

 

That brought a grin and more. Spike is always open to suggestion.

 

“You know what I want to do now?” His hand was running along the inside of my thigh. I had a pretty good idea of what he wanted to do, but it would be fun to hear him say it just the same.

 

“No, what do you want to do?”

 

His hand slid up until it nestled my crotch. “I want to ruin you for yourself, make you feel so good that every time you touch yourself, you’ll think of me.”

 

He sort of already had me there, but I hoped he was planning to put enough imagination into it that he was going to drive my fantasies to a whole new level of wild.

 

“What about you?” I said suddenly before his hands had tugged my pants off.

 

“What Luv?” His hands stilled and he met my eye.

 

“Have I ruined you for other women?” That was a gutsy thing to ask, considering how little I knew and how little we’d done.

 

“In more ways than one,” he told me. “Jury is still out on things we haven’t done yet, tobut give us a little time.” I let him tug my pants off. I wanted this. I wanted him.

 

Spike was doing lovely things to me, but instead of filling me with abandon and joy, they filled me with dread.

 

“Spike, stop.”

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

“I don’t want you to ruin me.” I suddenly felt unbearably sad. I didn’t want to long for him and only him, not when I was with another man, and not when I was alone. He stopped and grew unusually quiet. I wasn’t sure if he was even breathing.

 

“Hey.” I put my hanon his face.

 

“Funny yeah?” He gave a sad chuckle. “You don’t want to remember me, and I never want to forget you.”

 

“You know that’s not why.”

 

“Actually Buffy, I’m quite sure I don’t know anything.”

 

I’m guessing he didn’t get told to stop very often. “You have to leave, I get that, but I don’t want you to take a part of me with you, that I might need later.”

 

He turned over. “That bit about ruining, It’s just an expression.”

 

“I don’t think it is. And I don’t think you would have said it if you didn’t think it was at least partly true.” He was very keen on marking what was his.

 

We lay in silence a few minutes. This time I was getting to be the patient one, while he worked this out. So much time passed that I was wondering if he would ever “get it” or if we were both waiting each other out in a pointless tolerant standoff.

 

“I don’t want you to curse me and my sex life.” I tried to explain.

 

“So you want me to hold back? A lot of women will just take whatever they can get.” I wasn’t sure what his point was in saying that. Was he implying I was being difficult, or that they were stupid?

 

I gave a heavy sigh. “I don’t want a parting gift, Spike. Ta Ta, I’m leaving, here’s something to never forget me by.”

 

He began breathing again, it was comforting to hear. “Then you are asking me to hold back.”

 

“You already hold back lots of things, so this is just one more. Keep it together Spike, no phase shifting.”

 

It wasn’t fair for him to split our relationship into three parts and have sex be the one that was in sync with present time, always available, while his heart and mind were safe on a slow cycle, that I only touched base with now and again.

 

I was very close, right then, to giving in and saying “fine, just give me what I can get” like those other women of his. But I didn’t want to be just another hen in his hen house.

 

He brought his face towards mine and kissed me. If he had kissed me on the forehead, like some child, I would have kicked him out of my bed, forcefully and painfully. He kissed me on the lips, if not exactly passionately, at least with some hunger.

 

I felt like a director. Take two, a little less passion this time. On your mark…

 

Of course what I got, was the missionary position, and I was fully aware that it was a passive aggressive dig. Here you go Buffy, you asked for boring sex, that’s what you get.

 

It felt good, but not great. Not mind blowing.

 

“There Slayer, is that what you wanted?” It was a jerk move, calling me Slayer and sneering.

 

It wasn’t what my body had wanted, but it was what my head had asked for. I wasn’t going to be burning, during cold lonely nights, longing for him to fuck me like that again.

 

He stayed on top of me until he shrank and slipped out because wasn’t that what I’d asked him to do before? Stay, just a little longer? It was awkward, laying with his weight on me, waiting in silence, for the end.

 

What I wanted, was what we were like, when we were together. Not when our minds had already gone their separate ways. I felt cheated. We’d made so many inroads towards intimacy in the past weeks, but what for? Some things are worth doing just to say you did them, others should only ever be done as a step towards something bigger.

 

Was this his solution? To leave me with a bad taste in my mouth, so I wouldn’t want him again? I hadn’t wanted or needed him to go that far. I just didn’t want him to wow me too much.

 

He rolled off of me with a grunt.

 

“Is this how we’re going to leave it?” I couldn’t believe he was ok with things this way, with a cardboard wall suddenly thrown up between us.

 

“It’s not what I wanted Buffy.”

 

“What do you want?” I whispered it, to make it safe, to make it like anything we were saying was under the radar, and we could pretend we never said it later if that was what we needed to do. But Spike never whispers, never covers up, never offers a false sense of security.

 

“I want you to be like me. Free, immortal, selfish bastard I am.” He raised up on his elbows and looked at me. “I don’t want to be a man again and being a woman looks that much harder.”

 

Did he actually want me to BE vampire or just someone who lived on vampire time with a vampire’s careless attitude?

 

“Hey,” he nudged me, “Maybe we get your friend and my guy…have them phase shift the two of us, we meet somewhere in the middle. A time zone of our own to slip away to.”

 

That was the most fanciful I’d ever seen him.

 

I had to smile at that. It would be a much nicer reason to phase shift and suffer the inevitable hangover. He caught my smile and a look flashed over his face, a hunger of a different kind, mixed with sadness.

 

He let himself down on one elbow, facing towards me. “This…” he swept his hand down motioning to our bodies, “isn’t really the problem is it.” A question with no question mark at the end.

 

It wasn’t the only problem but yes, it really was a problem.

 

My heart might fall in love with another man and never wish they were him, but my body would remember. My body would scream for him, it already did. It already had. I nearly fell in love with Xander but my body longed for Spike.

 

Having spent those weeks with Spike, I knew I was in love with him but my heart didn’t feel ruined or wrecked. I felt more than ever, that I wanted someone to be with, to wake up next to, to laugh with, and who would sigh with pleasure when my hands ran over them. I wanted THAT, even if it couldn’t be with him.

 

I wonder what he saw flickering over my face because he backed down. The depth that had been in his eyes a moment earlier turned shallow. He gave a sigh and fell onto his back. Maybe that had been our moment to say something that might have changed things, but I doubt it would have changed them for the better. It would just have made it feel even more stupid and pointless than it was.

 

He pulled me close and tucked me under his armpit.

 

“I’m not going to leave it like that.” He was referring to the sex. He wouldn’t let our last time be the way it had just been. I was on board with that.

 

I wet my finger with my tongue and swirled it over his nipple. He flinched, but in a good way, as the tip of his nipple rose. I ran the tip of my tongue over it, he lay his head back, eyes closed, taking in the sensation. I flicked his other nipple with my other hand while I sucked gently on the first one. He chest shuddered as he chuckled. “Who’s ruining who?”

 

Yeah, I was so sure that in his long eventful life no woman had ever touched him this way. Still, I accepted the compliment and went on. I gave the other nipple a suck then kissed my way down his body to his navel, when I swirled my tongue in it, all his muscles tensed and shuddered.

 

“Tickles.” He wriggled under me. My heart hurt with how much I loved him. Yes, he was handsome, and yes, he had a nice body, and yes, I loved the way his skin tasted and the way he sounded when he sighed from pleasure, but what I felt in my heart right then, wasn’t lust or desire. It was love. I knew him sarcastic and strong, brave and foolish, rough and silly--and I loved him.

 

Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. If Spike was all I was EVER going to have, then I should have told him then, that I loved him, and he should have told me, but I didn’t believe that he was my one shot at love.

 

I nestled back under his arm and let myself fall asleep. I refused to lay beside him all night fretting over his imminent departure. In the morning I awoke with his erection at my back. As soon as he noticed I was awake, his hands began to move over me, pulling me into him.

 

When he pushed up into me, his “Oh god…Buffy…” sounded like a prayer of desperation. My hands snaked up over my head, pulling his head down closer to me, offering him the side of my neck to nip and kiss. He responded to my invitation, unleashing his full strength, moving me like I was a doll in his arms, forgetting all about the “not ruining me” part.

 

It came to me, somewhere in that mad lusty haze, that it wasn’t just how good the sex was, that would ruin me for other men, it was that he possessed me. Spike was leaving his mark inside me. Any man that would come after, would have to meet his challenge, and even though Spike would be far away, his mark was there. It would be hard for anyone to erase it.

 

The following night we had dinner with my mother and went up to bed. I’m sure we must have had sex, but it’s not what I remember. I remember him biting each of my knuckles, in turn, counting them off in German until he got to the last one and said: “and this little piggie went wee, wee, wee, all the way home.”

 

OMG, who was this man? It was impossible to accept that I would never really know.

 

He woke me two hours before dawn to tell me he was leaving. I watched him dress, then he came to the bedside and squatted down so we were eye level. He kissed me. Hard and slow, his fingers knotted at the back of my neck.

 

“Be safe,” I said.

 

“So YOU say.” Which meant “take your own advice” in Spike speak.

 

There was no mention of when we might meet again. For old time’s sake, he decided to leave out the window. I stood and opened it.

 

We both wanted to speak, we both wished there were words that would say everything that wanted to be said, but no words came.

 

“Goodbye Buffy.”

 

That sounded sickeningly final and a hot rod of anger shot through me. I wasn’t sure if it was at him, or at the situation but it felt like I had a dagger in my hand, and another on my tongue.

 

“Spike…”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Don’t wait for me.”

 

“Touche’ Slayer.” I heard one last tiny chuckle as he crawled out onto the roof and out of sight.

 

There was so much I needed to do, and I had no idea if his time zone might come round again.

 

………………..

 

A few hours later I smelled coffee, so I went downstairs to see my mother.

 

“He’s gone,” I announced.

 

“For tonight?”

 

“No, gone gone.”

 

She looked me up and down then patted the chair beside her and I came and sat. I wasn’t sure if what I was feeling was emotional exhaustion or emotional numbness.

 

“And you’re going to be ok?” she checked.

 

“Yes. No. Is it stupid of me to love him?” She already knew so why not just lay it out there.

 

“Not stupid, just unfortunate.” She held my hand. “Is he coming back?”

 

“I doubt it, I think he’s going to go and face the Tribunal.” It might be years before he actually did that, vampire time and all, but he would do it.

 

“Will they take him back?”

 

“He said they will eventually. They’ll need him.”

 

“Duty calls.” Yes, it did, for all of us.

 

We sat there, watching the steam rise from our mugs. This was the last piece of the incident with Ovid. Spike had blown into town with a mission, and now it was “mission accomplished”.

 

I had 25 ½ months left as the Slayer.

 

 

*****************************

 

Q&A 

The following are subjects readers asked for more information about... 

Mermaids and Gender

There is a lot of mermaid lore out there and it appears that there are several different creatures that are called mermaids in different cultures, so it’s also a case of making sure people are talking about the same thing.

Here’s the intel I got from Spike on the mermaids I was referring to in the last Q&A. There are vastly more female than male merpeople. It is claimed that it’s the result of physiological anomalies that take place during the changing process and it is said that men are much less likely to survive, but that may actually not be true.

There are a lot of stories about mermaids luring ships into places where they are likely to wreck, and mermaids being present at or near shipwrecks. Mermaids do increase their numbers by “saving” shipwreck victims. They suck the water out of their lungs and replace it with “eternal breath”.

The body is pulled to a watery grave where it undergoes the change. The “change” is a process that takes from several days to several weeks and occurs in places set aside as “chambers” by the mermaid population themselves. It’s a bit like a chapel, the larger ones could be compared to cathedrals. They are either natural caves or the actual wrecks of sunken ships. Makes sense, since that is where many mermaids originate.

There are various theories about why mermaids sometimes try to sink ships. Some say it’s because they want more mermen, and are trying to balance the numbers so they drown sailors so they can “save” them.

Some say they harbor resentments against human males for sexual crimes committed against mermaids by sea men over the centuries and they drown them for revenge and typically save only females.

Based on his own experience (he was once involved in a shipwreck) and from people/creatures he’s spoken to, Spike thinks that the second theory is probably the truth.

There ARE mermen. Some have been specifically turned by a mermaid who loved them or found them attractive. Some were saved in acts of mercy, such as children drowning in shipwrecks, and sometimes just because a mermaid felt compelled to save a random drowning man.

Mermaids age much more slowly than humans, but they will eventually age and die.

 

Human blood and healing

Vampires can live for a very long time on a diet of nonhuman blood. Certain species of animal/demon blood is more nutritious for them than others. However, without any human blood (or the blood of those specific demons whose blood is interchangeable with or superior to human’s) they will age and corrode.

Human blood restores their vitality. It undoes the damage that occurs as they go about their business. An experienced vampire can voluntarily put themselves into a state of suspended animation which will slow down the aging process and can preserve them for a VERY long time until they can get human blood to rejuvenate themselves.

Inexperienced vampires either don’t know that or don’t have the self-control to do it and will go mad with bloodlust and recklessly kill because they need to feed.

Spike says that it is better to have a large feed less often than many small feeds. So, he’d be better off killing a person (or cow) and gorging himself and letting a thorough healing take place than to drain one small animal or take a few drags on a person every day or so. If the vampire body is using the blood as an energy source rather than as a blood feed, it is less effective. Spike eats regular food for energy, he needs the blood because he’s a vampire. If he’s been eating normally then when he feeds all the blood goes towards rejuvenating himself. When a vampire drains a person, first their body uses blood as energy, then all the excess goes towards rejuvenating and healing. 8 pints in one day does more good than a pint a day for 8 days.

When Spike told me that he would heal on a diet of cow and lamb’s blood, but it would take longer, it was theoretically true. If he drank massive amounts of cow/lamb blood daily for a long period of time, he could “heal”. It wouldn’t be 100% because there are components in the blood that would always be missing, but with enough blood, most of the bases would be covered. In order to fully heal he would need human blood.


	20. The One Where I Live To Tell About It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life, and Slayage, goes on, and Buffy has her 22nd birthday.

The One Where Live to Tell About It

 

Not long after Spike left, a vampire gang turned up in Collinsville. They were raising minions, in other words, snacking on the locals and turning them, to form a vampire army. At least that’s what we thought they were doing.

 

Considering the diabolical plot we’d faced with Ovid, I can’t believe we were that naïve. My life became something like the TV show for a little while, I was patrolling cemeteries nightly and taking out fledglings at an alarming rate while trying to track down the master vamps who were creating them (master meaning the leaders who were creating minions to do their dirty work) For good measure, a new demon turned up every week or two to keep me on a merry chase.

 

You probably see where this is going sooner than we did. It was all a smokescreen. The real threat didn’t involve vampires at all, they were just the party clowns. We figured things out just in time to stop the scheme, which was diabolical but also easily thwarted.

 

The perps were creating a dimensional portal to allow human soldiers from a parallel universe to come in and infect human soldiers from our dimension with a virus that would render their brains magnetically controllable. Once infected they planned to take them back through the portal to fight in their universe’s war.

 

Wendy, with some help from Spike’s guy (even though I got to know him pretty well and called him Oscar when we were working together, in my mind he will always be “Spike’s guy”) blocked and cloaked the portal, leaving our soldiers safe to die in our own wars.

 

If the soldiers from dimension X had any sense, they would have nabbed some vamps and let them create vampire hessians, then let them loose on the other side to not only kill the opposing soldiers but turn them into even more vampire troops…See how my twisted brain worked after all those years as Slayer? If I turned rogue I could have made a heck of a bad guy!

 

After the soldier knapping plot, Xander left town. He went away to school and promptly fell in love.

 

I felt a twinge of jealousy, Xander was clearly over me. I didn’t actually want him to pine for me, but some romantic part of me thought that he’d hold the torch a little longer than that. I was more jealous that he’d gotten out of Collinsville and found love. I wanted to do just that.

 

I wanted to find love, so I would get over the torch I was carrying. I wanted to find love because I knew how good it felt to have a partner. Spike may have ruined me in bed, but he helped me in an unexpected way. I now craved a real relationship, the kind I was pretty sure, I could never have with him.

 

Maybe he helped my mother as well. She dated more regularly after he left. She didn’t form any serious relationships but she did have a few all-nighters, where she told me not to worry if she didn’t come home. I thought I’d be weirded out by that, but I wasn’t. I was glad for her. Both of us realized that sometimes it was nice to have a man around.

 

Wendy had two short relationships, but she was so focused on her sorcery studies that neither amounted to much.

 

Giles remained curiously single. I guess he’d decided to just wait out his term as active Watcher and find someone when he returned to England. I sympathized. I wanted a boyfriend but out of expediency, I had pretty much decided to wait out the Slayer gig as far as relationships went, then I turned 21.

 

We, meaning me, Wendy, her partner and, a few friends from school (I was back in class) went to a bar to celebrate. I got tipsy, not full out drunk, but enough that I was feeling pretty good about life in general and grooving the home stretch of my Slayer gig.

 

I met a guy. We danced, we laughed, he bought me drinks and I went home with him.

 

Turns out that Spike hadn’t ruined me for other men. I have him to thank for a very fun night. Now that I had some experience, I knew what I was doing and I didn’t feel self-conscious (ok, the drinks had something to do with that) I felt like “I got this”. I had the added advantage of feeling safe going home with this guy, if he tried anything I didn’t like, I could break him in half.

 

That was something I didn’t have with Spike. Spike and I were pretty well matched when it came to fighting. If push came to shove I think I had the advantage, but we will never know. Neither of us ever really wanted the other one dead.

 

I want it to be clear that I didn’t just go home with a brand new guy and let all my wacky out on him. What Spike and I had, no matter it’s odd beginning, was special and intimate. Spike did things to me and with me that I wouldn’t let another man do. Certainly not a stranger.

 

Ryan, not Riley (but lots of things about the character Riley are based on Ryan) was a very nice man. We dated for nearly one year and had a lot of fun.

 

I wasn’t in love with Ryan, but I loved us together. We laughed a lot, and because I was with him I had an actual social life for the first time. If ever there was a lesson in how to have a life post Slayerage, this was it.

 

We double dated with friends and went to parties, we even took a few weekends away together. Dawn liked him but was suspicious. She was waiting for the other shoe to drop. The shoe being, him suddenly disappearing with a not very convincing reason as to why the relationship ended. That was how she viewed things with Xander and Spike. Everything seemed like it was all cozy then BAM! Over.

 

Dawn told me she couldn’t figure out if I was erratic or a player. “Slay em and play em,” she teased me. I told her Ryan was the real deal. It certainly felt real. Riley wasn’t enchanted, immortal, a possible spy, or in the military, (that was made up for TV). He was a psychology major, and he did grow up in the Mid-West.

 

My mom liked Ryan, but, even though she hadn’t exactly trusted Spike, and she’d worried how our odd relationship affected me, she liked Spike better. She claimed Ryan was too polite around her.

 

Ryan was very much “my boyfriend” and didn’t have anything more than a passing respectful relationship with my mother. She felt like she’d never had a meaningful conversation with him. He never said or did anything around her that made her feel that she knew him.

 

Ryan wasn’t being artificial or ingenuous, it’s just the way he was around his elders. After Spike, and his frankness that bordered on arrogance (and often crossed the line), Ryan seemed immature and naïve. He wasn’t, compared to other people our age, but Mom was comparing him to someone who was essentially ageless. Of course, Ryan was found wanting.

 

Me, on the other hand, liked Ryan’s boyish enthusiasm. Spike was gracefully tolerant, but he didn’t share my tendency to overreact, put my foot in my mouth, laugh myself giddy over something completely stupid, or yell my lungs out at a football game. I knew I had growing up to do, but I was realizing I had a lot of being young to do as well.

 

Spike lived in a different world. I had a foot, and occasionally both feet, in his world, but with Ryan, I could be a carefree 21-year-old girl having herself a ball. It was a bonus that Ryan looked his age and didn’t have a Sun allergy.

 

How did we handle the issue of me being the Slayer? Lies. The Council had all kinds of backstories to choose from. We cobbled one together using a story of theirs and some details of my own. The frame story was that I had been badly injured in a terrible car crash in which a beloved teacher had been killed. That explained my scars and my regular “meetings” with Giles, and my therapist. It also explained my “episodes”, when I would fall into a depression or panic, related to my Slayer gig.

 

When situations arose that made it impossible to go out on dates I had to be more creative. Sometimes I said my leg was acting up. Lots of people who have suffered bad breaks have pain in conjunction with weather conditions.

 

“Don’t you ever feel guilty for lying to him?” Dawn asked me. “At least Spike and Xander knew the truth about you.”

 

“Ryan has more of me that Spike or Xander ever did.” I realized as I said it, how true it was. I was always conscious of holding something back when I was with Spike and Xander. They knew the truth about my life, but I held my heart from them, thinking it would prevent some kind of painful emotional breakdown. I never told Spike I loved him. If I had, and he left anyway, I don’t think I could have handled it.

 

I didn’t try to protect myself from Ryan and I didn’t try to protect him from me. I wasn’t afraid to laugh with him, I wasn’t afraid to let him make love to me as deeply and as passionately as he was able. There was never the worry that there had been with Xander, that if we crossed a line and became lovers we would wreck a beautiful friendship. Ryan and I were lovers from the night we met.

 

Leave it to Dawn to put it all out there. “So is Ryan as good in bed as Spike?”

 

I considered giving her the runaround and claiming I hadn’t had sex with Spike. After all, she’d never seen him stay over, or kiss me or anything, but I decided it wasn’t worth the energy.

 

“It’s none of your business, but yes, he is.” Rule One, NEVER EVER tell your sister that your current boyfriend isn’t the best, because she will make some stupid embarrassing comment, and it’s so much better if it divulges that the current guy is the bee's knees and better than anyone that came before him.

 

“Really?” She was surprised. “How?”

 

“And again with the none of your business.” I gave her a look but went on anyway. “He’s very loving and sweet, you know how he is, he holds my hand…”

 

“Yeah, I’ll bet that’s a blast between the sheets.” She gave her signature eye roll, more at the fact that I was being evasive than at the fact that Ryan was a sweetheart rather than a firecracker.

 

Ryan really was nice, in bed, out of bed and just about everywhere in between. Was he BETTER than Spike? He was in a different class. Spike was this wild wind that blew through my life and sent me rolling like a tumbleweed. Ryan was the relationship guy

 

What I had with Ryan was lovely, but when I was alone, when I touched myself, it was Spike I thought of and longed for. I wanted the wild wind. That makes sense right? I mean I HAD Ryan, so when I was alone, of course, I wasn’t going to fantasize about him. My alone time was the time for my spirit to roam free.

 

Occasionally I heard word of Spike. We heard via Angel, that he had blown through LA about a year after he left Collinsville. I was angry he didn’t stop to see me and relieved that he didn’t stop to see me. There would have been a huge dilemma for me had Spike come by.

 

I want to say I wouldn’t have cheated on Ryan, but I didn’t know how it would feel to see Spike again. I imagined that it might be like “What did I ever see in this guy?” now that I had a good relationship with someone, or it might have ended with me ripping Spike’s clothes off and saying “What did I ever see in Ryan?”

 

I was more relieved than anything, that Spike hadn’t come to me, and I’m not just saying that. I didn’t want to hurt Ryan and I didn’t want to hurt myself. Spike was intense and powerful. He was like the tide, even if I didn’t succumb to him completely he had a pull on me that I couldn’t ignore. Even if all we’d done was meet for coffee it would have unsettled me and affected things with Ryan.

 

The injuries, I inevitably suffered, were the hardest things to explain to Ryan. No backstory seemed sufficient. There are only so many fender benders a person can have, or clumsy incidents, or even hard hits in jiu-jitsu class.

 

Once, I ended up with some nasty infected claw marks across the backs of both thighs, from a short but well-armed demon. Those couldn’t be explained away by any of my usual alibis and I didn’t think Ryan would believe I suffered a bear attack in Collinsville.

 

I made up excuses about why we couldn’t have sex. I told him I was having my period, the second time in a month, sometimes nerves cause that. I didn’t heal in two weeks time so I moved on to telling him I forgot to take my birth control pills…9 days in a row.

 

“Buffy, is there something you aren’t telling me?” think fast girl, think real fast.

 

“Yeah, this is so embarrassing. I sort of have an infection. No,no, don’t worry, it’s not an STD or anything like that.”

 

That worked, I told him I had to wait for the Dr’s OK. Then I told him the Dr was booked up. I had to keep the ruse up for the six weeks it took my thighs to heal, and that was WITH Slayer healing.

 

Ryan and I ended our relationship three weeks shy of my 22nd birthday. He was going away to grad school and didn’t believe in long term relationships. I felt the same way, the point of being a couple, was to be together. Neither of us was ready to make a permanent commitment or to put our dating life on hold for an indeterminate amount of time.

 

The breakup hurt. I loved him and I loved us and I was going to miss the hell out of all the fun we had.

 

Even as Ryan was breaking up with me, I was already thinking who I might go out with next. I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t like alone. I liked fun Buffy with a fun boyfriend.

 

When I was in high school, I used to wonder if I’d ever make normal friends, but my year with Ryan proved to me that I had no problem at all with that. In the fall semester, after my Slayer commitment was over, I would be attending UCLA with my sister. There would be guys galore. I was cute (even Spike used that word) and energetic and fun. I wanted to be free to meet people, not be tied to a man who was someplace else building his future.

 

I had many friends in community college, but none that I was close to the way I was with Wendy. You don’t find many of those in a lifetime. My mother referred to the friends I hung out with when I was dating Ryan, as my “pick up and go” friends. There was always someone to pal around with and share good times, even if I wasn’t baring my soul.

 

I think she pretty much nailed it. I wasn’t in a place to be giving my heart and soul away. She said it was a little like phase shifting, you go through cycles when you’re open to things and then there are times you are closed to things. For a relationship to work, both people have to be in phase with each other.

 

Way to go, mom. Way to use the term that Spike did, when he said we should have our sorcerers create a time zone where we could meet up.

 

Mom said that Ryan and I were a tiny bit out of phase, and Xander and I had been in phase until the accident had knocked me into next Tuesday.

 

I took the bait. “What about me and Spike?” A year had passed, I wanted her assessment of things.

 

“I think you and Spike created your own phase.” She was watching me intently to see if she’d hit the zone. “Spike has enough force of will to do that.”

 

“And you think I just went along with him?”

 

“He traveled across the planet to save your life. He put himself in phase with you Buffy. You never had to chase him, he came back.”

 

“Oh come on, you were worried that he had me wrapped around his finger.”

 

“I was when he first showed up and I saw how rattled you were. But when I saw how he was around you. He would do anything you asked him to.”

 

She was so wrong, she had to be wrong. I hadn’t wanted him to leave but I never asked him to stay. I thought of how he commandeered me, how he marked me as his own. How was that HIM coming to me?

 

“So do you think we were in step?”

 

“No, if you were he’d still be here.” Then she reconsidered, “Or you’d have gone with him.”

 

I laughed out loud at that idea. Me, going with him? “I guess we’ll never know,” I said.

 

“Guess not,” she agreed, way too easily. It irritated me that she spoke as if we’d never see Spike again. I didn’t want to live in a world where I never saw him again. I didn’t want her uncanny mom vision to know something about the future I didn’t know.

 

…………………….

 

It’s hard to describe my 22nd birthday and being released from my duty as Slayer. There was much less relief than I anticipated, and I understood why previous Slayers hadn’t made a graceful transition. It was nearly the happiest day of my life, but it left me utterly bereft.

 

Yey, great big celebration. I’m still alive! Some other naïve teenage girl was about to become the target of evil and live a life of pain, terror, and suffering. Her family was about to get torn apart and she was going to have to learn to lie, fight, live with pain and injury and dream about the day it would be over and she would be free. She’d be free, but she wouldn’t have a clue about what to do with herself.

 

The day was, inevitably, anti-climactic. There was nothing that could appropriately honor the event. Members of the Council came and we had an expensive dinner. They thanked me for my service and they provided me with details about my pension package. Maybe they’d wanted to take me out two years prior, so they wouldn’t have to make good on their promises.

 

The pension provided for four years of University with a living stipend. Because of the mental and addiction issues of previous Slayers I was assigned a life coach. Any Slayer related injuries would continue to be treated at their expense, provided they were allowed access to medical records for their own research and data collection.

 

They spoke to me about coming to the Council Headquarters for debriefing, making it clear it was not mandatory, but that my experience would be invaluable and they would like to collect as much information as possible while it was fresh in my mind. They also wanted me to consider the possibility of mentoring future Slayers.

 

Following my birthday, I wouldn’t lose all of my Slayer strength and healing, but it would subside over time, by a noticeable degree, less so if I continued physical training but that was my own prerogative and they would neither provide nor pay for any training. The Council had no control over any of my supernatural abilities, those were given (and taken away) by the Powers That Be. The Council merely provided data based on the experiences of Slayers before me.

 

Xander and Wendy were present (but not Spike’s guy) and while they were recognized for their brave and generous service, nothing beyond thanks was offered to them, no training, debriefing therapy or monetary rewards. Of course, Mom and Dawn were there as well.

 

The Council did and continues to do, what it can to provide a human face and a human element into what is frankly an inhumane job. It’s a sign of the times. Years ago they didn’t bother, and likely in the future, it will fall by the wayside as well. They will provide reasonable care and services to the Slayer and her family, but the kumbaya will likely become a quaint thing of the past and nothing but a footnote in a Watcher’s diary.

 

Even if Ryan and I had still been together, he wouldn’t have been able to attend, but I missed him just the same. I liked having someone to share these moments with. He’d attended my associate's degree ceremony and I went to his graduation. I was proud of him and proud to be his girl, as old fashioned as that sounded, and now I wanted him here to be proud of me.

 

Everyone at the dinner WAS proud of me, and of themselves as well. There was no one present who hadn’t played a role of some sort. The glaring absence was Wes. Spike had told me that Wes wasn’t dead but had gone missing and the Council knew where. That had been more than two years earlier. The Council was never forthcoming with any further information. They had told us Wes was dead, and that was all we were ever going to hear.

 

I assume that Giles was eventually told the truth, but sworn by duty and his vow, he never revealed anything to us. I’ve asked a few times, though I felt bad for putting Giles in that position. His response has always been the same. “I’m sure I don’t know.”

 

As I sat celebrating with my friends, I knew that somewhere out there was another person, who was proud of me. Someone who would have sat with his hand over mine. He would have raised my knuckles to his lips and a wine glass in the air, in my honor. I could picture in my mind, the exact expression of admiration and a hint of something more, that he would wear on his face.

 

Of course, he was not there. It would be absurd to have a vampire, even an emissary for the Tribunal, present.Though, if you think about it, the Vampire Tribunal and vampires everywhere should be celebrating the retirement of a skilled Slayer.

 

That night, after I’d gone to my room, I locked my door, opened my window and waited, thinking he might come if only to say “I told you so.” It would be so like him, to breeze in, and call to me “Buffy, may I come in.” Of course the moment he was in, he wouldn’t ask permission for anything.

 

I fell asleep waiting, and in a dream, Spike did come to me, but he looked much older and I was shocked by the change in him. In the dream, Ryan was with me in bed. I woke, just as the men were facing off and sizing each other up. I sat up, my heart racing, and realized that I had no idea who I wanted to win. I wasn’t sure if they would have fought over me. Why would they? They had both chosen to leave, and for similar reasons. They had things to do that didn’t concern me and since we had no commitments to one another, they were free to go. They cared about me, but life took them elsewhere.

 

I left the door locked and the window open two nights more, and then told myself to stop being silly and act my age. Even Dawn was too old by then, to expect the Dark Prince to come to her window in the night and render her breathless with kisses.

 

My mother was restless my first week of retirement. She was keeping an eye on me, the way she had when I was 16 and she didn’t trust that any time I left the house I would return. I wondered if the Council had frightened her with too many cautionary tales of Slayers who couldn’t make it in the real world. Did my mother expect me to go kablooey? Or did she think I would go and try to slay vampires only to find out I couldn’t anymore?

 

“Mom, I’m fine,” I said to her when her brow furrowed as she saw me heading upstairs one night.

 

“Come play a game with me.” She reached for the backgammon set. I wondered if this was significant. Did she just want to play and have some together time, or was this an invitation to talk about Spike? She didn’t bring him up and neither did I.

 

We played, barely speaking, listening to the dice rattle in the cup and the soft sounds of the chips being moved. I remembered the way Spike’s hands were graceful as they moved the pieces and the way he tapped his finger on his knee as he strategized his next move.

 

“Mom, are you surprised I made it? I mean, to retirement. Did you think I would?”

 

She finished her move and looked up at me. “No, I didn’t think you would.” In that moment all the worry, fear, and age showed in her face. “And the funny thing is, after Ovid, I felt even less sure. I was always waiting for some stupid, careless thing to take you out…Now, I think of the other mother out there, just starting, and I feel so sorry for her.”

 

“I try not to think about her, the new Slayer,” I admitted. At first, I had liked the idea of mentoring but now that the opportunity was here it frightened me. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t face a young, startled girl and tell her how to do her job. I would tell her to run, run as fast and as far as you can, run and hide and refuse everything they tell you, you must do. That’s what I would have said if I had met her then.

 

“I wonder if she’ll have an Angel.” My mother’s mouth was wearing a tight smile. She knew, by then, what had happened that night with Scott and Angel, it was another wacky tale of my Slayer days.

 

My mortification from that night burned hot in me, but also pity for that poor hopeful girl out there, who had just found out that her life was not her own.

 

The next Summer’s woman to have a man in the house was not me or my mother. Dawn brought a boyfriend home from school, unannounced. She challenged my mother to protest, with a look of practiced indifference, and my mother just shrugged.

 

I felt a little guilty, didn’t my sister deserve the right of passage of having to face off our mother over having a boyfriend stay with her? It was supposed to be a milestone when we assert our independent womanhood, instead, my mother shrugged. I think her thought process was “Hey, at least he isn’t a vampire”.

 

I truly believe that Dawn was disappointed. I tried to play the role of worried sister, giving her the whole “are you sure you know what you are doing” shtick, and it wasn’t all a put on. I did wonder if she knew. I mean REALLY knew, not just the corn and beans (another Spikism) but what it truly meant to have someone get that close to her, someone who wasn’t family, but who could become family or cause her to separate from her own.

 

It can sneak up on you. You think that you’re a smart, independent young woman, in charge of your life and your body and then you realize that you’ve become attached in a way you didn’t even know existed. Did Dawn know THAT?

 

I wondered about all the things that I didn’t know, realizing that in a lot of ways, I was just like that new Slayer. I had the Slayer gig behind me but there were 1000 other huge challenges in life that I was just as green about. I felt a little cheated that I couldn’t muster an authentic, smug, smarty-pants attitude. I wanted to be able to strut a bit. Look at me! I was the Slayer and I lived to tell about it!

 

Dawn had that in spades. Sure, she was bound to fall flat on her ass some of the time, but she had strut and swagger down to an art.

 

Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. The same could be said about the swagger; better to have thought you knew it all and find out that you didn’t, then to always have known what a little fool you really were.

 

Oh, I’d had my swagger days and so many episodes of righteous indignation. I wish I had some of that back.

 

It was hard for me to see Dawn with her boyfriend because I was smarting from the loss of Ryan. Amicable break ups suck. It’s like you have no right to tears. You can’t call your former partner horrible names, or wish fire and brimstone down on them.

 

Friends are sympathetic, but they don’t feel bound to help you see it through, the way they do when there is an ugly break up. They don’t take you out drinking and dancing and have everyone talk about their horrible exes and goad each other on. You’re not supposed to hurt because the break up wasn’t personal.

 

I had to act civilized. I couldn’t legitimately say “Ryan is such an asshole, Only a jerk would accept a fellowship at Georgetown University.” See, that just doesn’t work.

 

Sigh, I only had to get through the Summer, then school would start, and my life would turn over a new leaf.

 

*****************************

 

Q&A

How do you handle the fact that Spike has to kill people to survive?

Wow, you guys don't hesitate to go for the jugular!

Spike’s need specifically for human blood, varies with his own health. If he’s been badly injured his need goes up, during normal times his needs are low.

At the risk of being accused of major rationalization…

We are in the 21st century, so Spike doesn’t have to kill people, he can get blood from humans and they can still live to tell about it. Spike gets most of his blood needs met via animal/demon blood. The human blood that he needs, he gets from donations or people who give blood in exchange for cash.

People sell their blood for money. There’s an underworld market for it. Most of the people who do it are hard up, or they owe someone for “services rendered”. 

Even in normal society people “donate” platelets and plasma for cash.

He also has me.

I sometimes tease Spike, telling him he’s domesticated, but it’s pretty much the truth. Think of a dog or cat. In nature, they hunt and kill to eat. We bring them into our homes and in exchange for protection, health care, shelter and easy meals, they give up (for the most part) killing things. They no longer do the killing themselves, but animals still have to die for them to eat. You can’t keep a dog alive on beans and tomatoes.

Spike wants to live in the developed world with all its amenities and he wants to live with me, and there are restrictions that come with that. Spike doesn’t kill people to eat anymore.

There are times, in a pinch, he bites people but doesn’t take enough to harm them. When he was fighting in the war, there were times he killed sick or injured soldiers so he could heal and continue the mission, his justification was, they were going to die anyway.

Sounds cold? Sometimes the way he talks disturbs me too. Spike is very much a bottom-line kind of guy, and he is unapologetic about the choices he makes. One thing dies that another might live, is the economy of life on our earth.

Obviously, Spike has been responsible for many hundreds of human deaths over the 160 years he has been alive, and nothing is going to change that. He did what he deemed necessary to keep his skin on. He has also done work that has saved countless lives. It’s not a case of me being able to make a two column chart with tally marks to decide if Spike had done more harm than good, and if he falls short in the wrong column I up and stake him.

It’s more complicated than that.

Spike says that if you look at human history, each of us is here as the result of a complex stream of events that include heroic deeds and horrific deeds. Not a single human can claim they fell straight from heaven and has never eaten anything but grass and are blameless.

In every person’s family history is love, hate, murder, sacrifice, rape, forgiveness, feast, and famine. Many of us have the luxury of disavowing the parts of our family or personal history that we are not comfortable with, but it doesn’t change the fact that for us to be here, a lot of things had to happen first.

Spike has less of the luxury of disavowal. He’s been around long enough to have done a lot of the things himself. He’s been the hero, the murderer, the raped and the rapist, he’s been rich and poor and loved and hated. Here he still is, doing what he has to do, to live in the position in the world he has chosen for himself.

I can choose to hold all of his long history against him on principle, or I can look at who he is today and what he is doing now. He’s learned things over the decades and he makes different decisions based on different criteria than he had previously.

I’ve asked Spike if he would ever go back to killing and draining people. He admits, without hesitation, that he likely will at some point. Life may demand it of him, or he may fall into a frame of mind where he no longer sees a good reason not to.

He says there is a certain type of ruthlessness that develops in in times of famine, plague or other breakdowns of society. He says that if he lasts long enough, he will see all those things happen again, and he will make his decisions based on them, just as everyone around him will.

I have seen my share of life behind the scenes. Many living things have died at my hands, entire dimensions have been altered as the result of things I’ve done. There are hard, often impossible calls that need to be made, and you have to find a way to go on living with yourself.

I trust Spike’s judgment. That’s the bottom line. If he does something to breach that, then we have a problem.


	21. The One Where I Get Hit On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy takes a trip and runs into an old friend

The One Where I Get Hit On

 

Wendy was moving to England to study with the Council sorcerers. She had been covertly apprenticing under Oscar, Spike’s guy, ever since they met, but that was on the hush and shush from the Council who didn’t associate with sorcerers for hire. Magic is magic and Oscar knew his stuff, but the Council has its own ways and reams of expectations.

 

Wendy wanted the future the Council could provide. She didn’t want a cloaked rat trap office in a nowhere town like Collinsville. I didn’t blame her one darn bit, not for apprenticing with a sorcerer of questionable morals or for taking the best the Council had to offer. She knew what she was getting into, namely that there would be no more secrets in her life, the Council would believe they owned her and they would do everything in their power to make her feel beholden to them.

 

She was fine with it. She’d met several of the Council sorcerers already and said they were cool, cooler than the Watchers and rule makers. The Council told their sorcerers what they wanted them to do, but the sorcerers got to choose how they did it. There was a rebel factor built in that appealed to Wendy’s wild side.

 

I decided to travel to England with her. I wasn’t ready to mentor a new Slayer, but I was ready to be interviewed by the Council. My therapist suggested that talking things out with them could help me to process and move on. She also reminded me that I still had the right of refusal and could stop the talks at any time, as well as choose what and what not to share.

 

The Council echoed that but requested that if I chose to withhold information, that I let them know. They said it was helpful to know where the holes in the story were. I could say something was personal, or painful, or I didn’t remember and they wouldn’t push, but they didn’t want me to lie. That sounded fair to me, and knowing that the information could help another Slayer, maybe even save her life, led me to agree to their request.

 

This time, Wendy and I weren’t two high school girls out on their own for the first time. Though I felt nearly as giddy inside, and I still planned to have fun, I knew I had to act quite a bit more mature than on my first visit.

 

Dawn tried to piggyback on the trip, which I flatly refused. She had already traveled far more than me with her studies and performing and I was afraid this might be my last hurrah and certainly one of my last times to just be Wendy and me together. Dawn sniffed a bit over “what about sisters” and I pointed out that we’d be sharing a campus soon and would have as much sister time as we cared to.

 

The Council had employees in many areas so I wasn’t required to limit my visiting to Headquarters. I worked out a schedule of interviews that allowed me to visit several locales and various Council members were happy to put me up and show me around. That was very generous of them, but there was no doubt in my mind that each and every member was briefed to ask me as many questions about my time of service as they could and to record the answers. That’s how it is with any military or intelligence operation, they were doing no worse than any secret organization and better than many.

 

I had come to do a “tell most”, if not a “tell all” and played along. There were things I planned to always hold in my heart, but my therapist was right, some things were better shared. I received useful feedback and intel that helped me make sense of things. I was told some behind the scenes details, that didn’t divulge Council secrets but helped me put things in perspective. I also learned some facts that scared the hell out of me, all in a day’s work for a Slayer, retired or otherwise.

 

Kelly, the other former Slayer had hoped to meet with me but was just about to give birth to her second child and was in no condition to travel OR to take visitors.

 

Several Council members I visited or stayed with had children of various ages, reminding me that I could be a mother someday. Working with the supernatural didn’t preclude you from doing very natural things like marrying, making babies and changing nappies. The fact that the kids treated me like I was their parent’s peer rather than their own, cemented the idea that I was indeed grown up.

 

I hadn’t yet attended University, though I’d spent a good bit of time on campus with Ryan and Wendy. I still felt childlike in some ways, for all my having to grow up fast. I lacked sophistication, which by this time Wendy had in spades. She very much knew how to handle people, and present herself. People were comfortable around her because she behaved professionally. People were comfortable around me because I was non-threatening.

 

I felt provincial but no one from the Council treated me that way. They treated me as a smart young woman, doing things and going places and I liked the way it felt, even when I felt I was grinning through my teeth trying not to show what a yokel I was. I hoped I was at least faking it well. I wanted the poise they showed as professionals and I tried to imitate them.

 

I hoped, when I returned home in three weeks my mother would notice a difference, a REAL difference, not me pretending to be someone I wasn’t, but me with a new layer of worldliness.

 

Even as I was thinking all that, I was trying to figure out how to ask Wendy to do me a very immature favor. I couldn’t get it out of my head that Spike had told me I should have looked him up last time I was in England. At that time, I had no way to look up a vampire and no way of knowing he was look-up-able, but now I did.

 

Now I had a savvy sorcerer on hand, who I was sure, could locate him with no problem. It was idiotic of me to ask her to do it. I had stopped having her search the ether for word of him, years ago, and doing so had felt like a step towards maturity. Why regress now? Why have her look up an old crush when I was at the start of a fresh new adventure in life?

 

Wendy would understand, that wasn’t the problem, she’d probably even be sympathetic. If I asked her, it was as good as done. The problem was, I didn’t want to admit to myself, let alone another person, that I wasn’t over him. He was the past, part of the Slayer gig, why go there? Did I think we’d catch up over a pint? I’d tell him about my adventures and he’d tell me about his, and we’d laugh about old times and say we needed to do this again sometime.

 

I didn’t want that. If I saw Spike and he was standoffish, I didn’t think I could handle it, and what was he likely to be BUT standoffish? It was one thing for him to breeze into Collinsville whenever he felt like it when he was good and ready to see me, but this time it would be me approaching him when he wasn’t expecting it.

 

Who knew what I might be dropping in on or interrupting. Yet, he had wished I’d done it before. My request might amount to nothing, he could be anywhere on the planet, either doing his own thing or on Tribunal business. The likelihood of him being in England was slim to none, so what would it hurt? It would satisfy my own curiosity and if he DID find out I’d been around, I could tell him I tried to look him up.

 

I thought and rethought the whole thing over until my stomach was in knots. Finally, I just went to Wendy, “Do you think you could do me a favor?”

 

“Sure, what cha need?”

 

“Well, Spike told me if I’m ever here, I should look him up, but it’s not like he’s in the directory.”

 

“Do you know if he’s still working with the Tribunal, he might be listed in the records as an emissary, you could locate him through them.”

 

“I sort of was wondering, if you could,” I waved my hands around, “find him for me.”

 

“Work a little whoo hoo,” she translated.

 

“It’s personal, I’d rather the Council didn’t know. For a lot of reasons. I mean…with everything that happened. I don’t know if they hold any grudges.”

 

“Of course Buffy. I’m sure I can do it. You don’t happen to have anything of his, do you? Something that belonged to him?”

 

I shook my head. Nothing. In all that time all I had was memories.

 

“Ok, well, do you have any idea where he might be? Any word on his whereabouts?”

 

“I’m basically asking you to find a needle in a haystack aren’t I?”

 

“Well, I can probably find him, but what did he want you to do once you locate him?”

 

“Mostly I think he was joking, but I thought, you know if he’s in the area…”

 

“I’ll see what I can do.” She smiled.

 

What she did was check the records. He wasn’t yet back on the Tribunal’s list of active emissaries, but that didn’t mean they didn’t know where he was, just that they weren’t trusting him with any important jobs.

 

Wendy used connections, not sorcery, to track him down, though I didn’t know it then. In fact, I didn’t even know she’d been successful because she didn’t tell me. She said she was still working on it and that was as much as I knew.

 

She had the same fear I did, plus one. Spike might be up to something not so good because as far as she knew, that was usually what he was up to. Tracking down an errant vampire, while you’re working for the Council, tends to make them jumpy and go under cover. She also didn’t know if he wanted to see me. She didn’t have any details on how we ended, but she knew that if I contacted him and he refused to see me, I would be devastated. She did her dirty work on the sly and told me that she had a few leads but wasn’t sure if any of them would prove fruitful.

 

Once I had put wheels in motion with Wendy, I knew I had done all I could. Besides, I didn’t want Spike to think I was chasing him, or even checking up on him. What he did was none of my business, less than ever now that I wasn’t the Slayer anymore.

 

I liked England, even though I wasn’t much of a history buff, it was exciting to be in a place where so much had happened that I had heard about. I realized that I knew way more about the supernatural world than my own world. I didn’t know there were Roman ruins in England until someone was like “hey, the Romans built this.” I was all “Rome is in Italy.” I had no idea the Empire had stretched that far. I really needed to get out of Collinsville.

 

Seeing more of the world would be good for me, and Wendy and Giles were going to be there, I considered taking the Council up on their offer of a mentoring position, but another dreary day and another rainy night made me value my California Sunshine all that much more. I didn’t belong here. I no longer belonged to the Council, even though these people made me feel at home, even though talking things out was somehow helping me put them in the past. When I returned home, I would be lighter and freer. The Council was my past, I just hoped that didn’t mean that Giles and Wendy were in my past as well. I hoped there wouldn’t be a conflict of interest if we stayed in touch.

 

By the end of my second week, and I was back in London, at Headquarters. I was making my way, one evening, from the reading room, where I’d had my last interview of the day, to my lodgings. (I adore that word) I had a wool cap pulled over my head, in spite of it being summer, because I needed something to keep off the misting rain. I was contemplating whether or not to have something substantial to eat or settle for milk and biscuits (cookies). This was the life! Instead of worrying about demons and vampires I was thinking about cookies.

 

I wrinkled my nose up at the smell of smoke and stopped short at the silhouette of a man, lounging against the wall of the archway I was about to pass through. So much for congratulating myself on not having to worry about things that go bump in the night. He inspected the cigarette, took a long last draw and tossed it away.

 

“Hello Cutie,” He said. His voice sent shivers down my spine. “Come give us a kiss.”

 

I swallowed hard. He turned and walked towards me in the dark, his shoes were hard soled and clicked against the wet bricks of the paving.

 

“A kiss?”

 

He backed me up to the wall of the archway and leaned in “For starters.” Then he stood straight and peered at me just a moment. Just enough time for me to stop him if I was inclined to. Just enough time for me to reach up and kiss him if I was inclined to.

 

It’s hard to kiss when you’re smiling as hard as I was smiling.

 

“Heard you were looking for me. I thought you were done with all this.” He motioned around to the buildings and walkways.

 

“I am, mostly. I mean I’m not the Slayer anymore. I made it..like you said. I thought maybe you were going to come.”

“Was going to but I heard you were….happy.” Spike’s eyes flitted away from mine. So he’d heard about me and Ryan, that was why he stayed away. As always, I wondered where he got his intel, and I wondered why he cared about Ryan. Since when did Spike care about propriety? “And... you told me not to wait.”

 

Yeah, I had said that.

 

“So, are you still…happy?” I could tell he felt a fool, not only talking about it but using these terms. At the same time, I couldn’t imagine him, like some hopeful guy in a bar, asking me if I was seeing anyone.

 

I had been happy and content, but seeing Spike again made me forget all that. It shot me back two years earlier, to the stress and fear and pain of Ovid, and all those things he’d been a part of. I felt a flash of panic. He saw it all flicker over my face, it couldn’t have taken even half a second, but he stepped back.

 

I swallowed down my confusion. I wasn’t 16 yr old girl thumbing my nose at my Watcher. I wasn’t 17 and lust crazed or 19 and terrified I was about to die. I wasn’t the Slayer. I was a 22-year-old woman about to enter University, and I was in a foreign city speaking with a native... an arrestingly handsome native that my heart wasn’t sure what to do with. This too must have shown on my face, because he stepped towards me again.

 

“Do you have somewhere you need to be?” he asked.

 

I shook my head. Spike tucked my hand into his arm and said: “Come on then.”

 

I was like Alice falling into the rabbit hole. I don’t remember talking, though it seems we must have. All I recall is moving quickly through streets and alleys, in and out of buildings. Some of the time we were two people just walking down the street then we’d turn into an alley and I felt like we were predator and prey.

 

I recognized knowing looks from two vamps as Spike led me past them and into a club. Spike got us drinks, then we pushed through the dance floor and out the back hall. People nodded at Spike as we passed, eying me curiously, and I can imagine why. The people in the club were dressed to the nines and I was a sight in jeans, a jumper, and my wool cap.

 

Spike was moving quickly but I could keep up easily with his pace, if not with his plan. Was he showing me something, or showing me off? Where was he taking me? The images flickered past and I recall the sense of being sucked down and down then into a hall, up some stairs, and through a door.

 

Spike nodded to a couple on a couch then he pulled me into a room. It was dark and cool. In a moment he was kissing me, pushing me down onto a bed.

 

“Is it really really you?” he murmured, and then he did that thing, holding my jaw open, feeling every nook and crevice of my mouth with his tongue, inspecting me, tasting me.

 

I was in a strange place, in a dark room with a man on top of me. My mind registered that this was a dangerous situation, but muscle memory kicked in, more powerful than the instinct to throw him off, was the memory of being with him, of wanting to be his.

 

This time it was me that waited patiently while he did this thing he had to do, knowing he needed to do it, and knowing that it would be ok when he caught up to himself.

 

Spike released my jaw, his breathing was slow and shallow, the room was very dark, nearly pitch black. Suddenly, I sensed a presence in the room, vampire! I put my hand up and reached for his face. My finger snagged on his fangs. He jerked back but I took his head in my hands, and I pushed the heels of my palms into the crook of his jaw, forcing his mouth open. He didn’t fight me, as I put my mouth over his and with my tongue explored him, running my tongue over his palate, his teeth, the fronts and backs of his fangs. I heard his growl of passion as I felt him growing hard against my leg.

 

“It’s really you,” I said.

 

“Damn girl, do you know what you’re doing?” I could tell by the quaver in his voice, that threatened to turn into a growl, exactly the effect I was having on him.

 

I was in a vampire lair, half beneath a fanged out, turned on vampire. He was already starting to move over me, pulsating, predatory. I wondered if it was too late to say “no”, too late for him to stop what he was doing. I didn’t want him to stop, but I did want to know if we were past the point of no return.

 

“Spike?”

 

“NO.” His fingers dug into me. He nosed at my neck and my ear and said: “It’s William.”

 

All our previous times together had been in my world, on my territory, where I was the Slayer, but tonight all the tables were turned. His world, his territory, and he was William, the Bloody--Slayer of Slayers.

 

I can’t explain exactly how I knew who he was. Maybe because Spike was clearly not your average vampire, and the most extraordinary vampire named William, was, of course, William the Bloody, who hailed from London and who was about Spike’s “age”.

 

Had Giles known? The Council must have known. Well, I knew now.

 

His fang sliced the lobe of my ear as he took it in and suckled it, “Buffy,” his knee had worked its way between my legs. “Can I come in?” His delicious growl of a chuckle reverberated across my neck.

 

“Are you going to hurt me?”

 

“I don’t plan to, but don’t say anything about ruining you or any other rot because I don’t fucking care, I just want you. Now.”

 

A million miles away in an alternate Universe a woman, who looked and sounded very much like me, was making love to her handsome boyfriend with a very bright future ahead of him.

 

But I was here now, out of phase with that woman, and that universe and that boyfriend who was already headed elsewhere. I was in phase with this one and this handsome, horny vampire.

 

He just wanted me. Now. He could have any woman he wanted by force or by charm...

 

“I missed you and I missed this,” I hissed, knowing even as I said it that the “this” that was about to take place, would be something that we hadn’t done yet. I was no longer in control, that alone made everything different.

 

“So you think of me from time to time?” His delight was obvious. My mouth curved into an involuntary smile and I spoke right into his ear, “Every time I touch myself.”

 

Spike made a sound I can only describe as a squeal, and he got up to undress.

 

I barely had my clothes off when he was reaching to arrange us, pulling me to him, pulling one of my knees over his shoulder as he crawled towards me. He put a finger into me to check if I was wet. “I’m sorry Buffy but this first time might be…” He pulled his finger out. “You know how I get.”

 

First time? Well, he wasn’t going to kill me. And yes, I did know exactly how he got. What I didn’t know was why I liked it so much.

 

OK, not to interrupt the action BUT. Maybe you are asking yourself that same question. Why did Buffy like Spike so much? That bugged me a lot, after he left, following the Ovid incident. I could easily think of a half-dozen reasons to be attracted Spike, but I loved him, and I loved the things he did, not just the bedroom things but a thousand little things, and felt like a lot of those things, I really shouldn’t like.

 

After I returned from England, I was all in a knot over it and went all hand wringy to my therapist. She had a theory that is so crazy that it might be true. She said that maybe I liked him and the way he did things out of plain, old, simple, human attraction. No need for theories on daddy issues, slayer/vampire dynamics, rebelling against the Council or subconscious death wishes. She thought that he and I were simply attracted to each other.

 

“He’s like a serial killer,” I pointed out.

 

“Does he do it for fun?”

 

“I’m not sure fun is the word for it, but he has a compulsion, isn’t that what they have? They can’t help themselves?”

 

The Council had therapists available to me for the duration and beyond, and I knew that they were reporting back. They always allowed for time, at the end of a session, that was “off the record” but I didn’t believe the first two when they told me that. With this one, Helen, I trusted that “off the record” actually was. She cared about me and wanted to help me have happy post Slayer existence. Her telling me that maybe it was normal to fall in love with Spike, threw me. How could that be conducive to happiness?

 

I wondered if it was the time to mention that Spike was also William the Bloody, Slayer of Slayers. He didn’t just have a compulsion to kill people, he had a compulsion to kill Slayers. One day he was likely to decide that we’d tried every sexual position known to man or demon and rather than let things get boring he’d eat me as the grand finale.

 

“Do you believe that?”

 

No, I didn’t. But that didn’t change any of the rest of it. He had a long and colorful history of carnage.

 

I wasn’t worrying too much about those things while Spike was doing that thing he does so well, or when he pulled out and said, “Damn.” because he couldn’t find anything to wipe up with in the dark (he is VERY clean, sometimes bordering on obsessive) or when he finally fell onto the bed beside me, and began kissing me passionately. He could take his time now that his blind lust had been tempered.

 

“How did you know I was looking for you?” I asked between kisses.

 

“Weren’t you?”

 

“Don’t evade the question.”

 

“My guy told me.”

 

“Oscar?”

 

“We keep in touch. You’re friend asked if he knew where I was.”

 

OK, I knew that Wendy and Oscar kept in touch.

 

“So that’s how you knew I was “happy”. You keep tabs on me.” I could hear the irritation in my own voice.

 

“Course I do.” I could hear the irritation in his.

 

“For the Tribunal?”

 

“Don’t be thick. I do it for me.”

 

I bristled. Who the hell did he think he was to follow my personal life?

 

“So, it’s OK for me to poke about your business for professional reasons but not because I care?” He thought I was being absurd.

 

He cared. He wanted to know because he cared.

 

This wasn’t a huge shocker to me. I knew I was more than a job to him. I even suspected he loved me in his own way. He clearly liked me. But I hadn’t let myself believe that he thought much about me when we weren’t together.

 

I was his woman in Collinsville, a pleasant way to spend time, and he seemed to feel protective of me, but I couldn’t let myself think it was anything more. He was going to leave, he was ALWAYS going to leave.

 

“I thought you were glad to see me.” He sounded a little hurt.

 

“I am glad, I just didn’t realize there was a grapevine. What if I kept tabs on you?”

 

“Maybe we’d be doing this a bit more often.” He nipped my shoulder. His fangs had already been drawn in.

 

Well, at least he cared about screwing me.

 

“Where are we?”

 

“Crash house, I’m just putting up here while I’m in town. It’s not posh, sorry.”

 

I wasn’t going to ask if it was a vampire crash house, it probably was and I didn’t want to know.

 

“Wouldn’t mind holing up at your place, I’m sure it’s nicer.”

 

“You want me to put you up in my room at the Council?” Yeah, right buster.

 

“Bit of a thumb your nose yeah? I’m sure you have a better bed.” He gave the mattress a thump.

 

He was unbelievable.

 

He nosed my ear and neck again. “God, but it’s good to see you. Missed you so much.”

 

Wow. I nearly asked him to say it again. Go ahead, if you feel inclined, call me a traitorous whore. Ryan and I had broken up like four weeks ago and I was screwing a vampire in a flop house.

 

“You know…” he said, running a finger down my jawline where it made a leap to my chest and slipped between my breasts with a tickle. “While we’re waiting for me to recover, I could take care of you.” His finger slipped past my navel, then his hand splayed as his fingers worked their way towards my curls.

 

Part of me was like “oh fuck yes” and part of me was “hey that’s really intimate and I haven’t seen you for two years, and we’re in a vamp crash house”. I knew what he had in mind, and it was VERY intimate.

 

Two years is a long time, and I’d spent the last one making love to a different man. Letting Spike fuck me was one thing, having him touch me and kiss me there, and have me that vulnerable was something else again. Plus, I didn’t know what this was. At this point were we, as Dawn put it, fuck buddies?

 

He hadn’t locked the door. This was literally the ONLY time I could think of that he hadn’t done that.

 

I am sure I had tensed as his hand got close to my pubic hair.

 

He stopped. “What is it, Luv?”

 

Should I tell him that I felt like a traitorous whore?

 

I considered using the classic line, that things were moving too fast. “Privacy,” I said instead. That would buy me a lot of time to work through this because the privacy issue was pretty much tied to this location.

 

His fingers backed up like a startled spider. He was silent for a few breaths. Then resumed nuzzling my neck and said: “I’ll take you anywhere you want.”

 

Which I assumed meant location, or to any depth or height of sexual pleasure I desired. He was nothing if not accommodating.

 

“Darkest alley, finest hotel, Spain, Amsterdam, anywhere but the moon.”

 

Damn, he was good, and seriously, all that for the opportunity to give me an orgasm? At first thought “hotel” seemed sleazy (yeah I know, nothing was sleazier than where we already were) but he had said FINEST. Maybe I should test that out, see if this was just a smooth line or if there was any weight behind it.

 

“It’s late…”

 

He began to protest, so I put my finger over his lips to quiet him. He immediately took it into his mouth and sucked on it while I finished my thought. “But tomorrow night, you can take me to that finest hotel.”

 

“What about tonight? You going to make me stay here?” Even though I couldn’t see it, I knew he was batting his lashes at me.

 

“I have a small bed,” I warned him.

 

“Sounds perfect.”

 

This time we didn’t take a maze or push through throngs. We caught a bus and in 20 minutes were a short walk from the Council grounds.

 

The bus ride had given me time for my head to clear. The sight of his hand over mine as they rested on his thigh looked so perfectly normal, how did we have this casual intimacy even when we were so long apart?

 

As we walked towards my building, he brought my hand to his lips, and he looked for all the world like a happy little boy skipping to the candy store after school, anticipating a treat.

 

His mood was infectious. Buffy, I told myself, stop worrying and let yourself have this. This is your life that you have made, YOURS, truly yours, not the Slayers. Maybe he was another part of the healing, of the putting things into place so I would feel lighter…but I didn’t want to put him in the past, to debrief and move on. But maybe I would if I could get him out of my system.

 

When we got to my door he put his hand out for my key, and let us in. He really was unbelievable, not a mere vampire sneaking onto the Council grounds, but William the Bloody, Slayer of Slayers opening the former Slayer’s door with a key and ushering her in.

 

Do you wonder why I wasn’t more worked up over the Slayer of Slayers bit? I mean heck, I had just found out who this guy really was, but I also knew who he was to me. My logical brain kept telling me I should not trust, should stay careful and alert, should assume the worst, but my illogical everything else, felt like I knew him and that he would protect me.

 

I pulled off my hat and reached for a comb, seeing as I now had bed head on top of hat head. Spike was looking around, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he did so.

 

“Looks a bit like a prefect’s room.”

 

He read the confusion on my face. “When I was a boy away at school, guess you’d call him middle management these days. Their rooms were two steps above our halls, bit like this.”

 

A boy away at school, that was who he’d once been, just as surely as he’d been the bane of Slayers. I pulled the comb through my tangles.

 

“May I?” He picked up a brush from the top of the bureau and took it to the back of my head, one of his hands went up under my hair as he worked. Was he just smooth and charming or was he actually amazing? Did it matter?

 

“Sit.” He pulled a chair over with his toe. It felt good to be done to. I knew I’d miss that part of being a Slayer, the part where people give you a bit of deferential treatment.

 

Ryan made me feel special but, oh god, I can’t believe I am committing this to pixels, but here goes. I’m all about equality except when it pertains to me, and especially when it pertains to me and my guy. I like that Spike took my key to open the door. I like that he kisses my hand, and walks on the side near the road, and has his weird little laundry list of things he wouldn’t think of letting a woman do. He wouldn’t care a flying fuck if I didn’t like them, I’d have to put up with them anyway because they are part of who he is, take it or leave it. He gets off on weirdest things.

 

Spike didn’t, and doesn’t, treat me as “less than” because I’m a woman, he treats me differently because I am HIS woman. Not everyone gets the deferential treatment, and when he’s tired of me neither do I. But most of the time he does these things that make me want to nestle in the crook of his arm and tumble into bed with him.

 

Ryan thought it was very liberal of him, to always ask my opinion of things. Spike expects that he’s going to hear my opinion whether he cares to or not, and doesn’t think a thing about it one way or another because that’s the way it’s been with men and women since time began. Men may get their way because they’re bigger and stronger, but women don’t keep their opinions to themselves.

 

He also believes that though men are bigger and stronger, it’s ever so much nicer for both parties involved, if a man uses that to both their advantages rather than merely his own.

 

So there he was brushing my hair, all the while, I am sure, knowing that soon enough he’d have me naked in the too small bed.

 

My mother always said that the best way to start a difficult discussion was to jump in with both feet. “So, William huh?”

 

His hands stilled in my hair. “You didn’t know? I wasn’t sure.”

 

“Is it common knowledge?”

 

“Not these days, but--”

 

“How could the council NOT know?” I twisted my head around.

 

“Closely guarded secret.” He stooped beside me. “How did you know what I meant?”

 

“I don’t know, I just did.” It was true. There could be 1000 vampires named William out there, maybe it was something in the way he said it, maybe it was because I’d been taught to be on the lookout for William.

 

“Why tell me now?”

 

“Why not?”

 

“When you first came to Collinsville, was that why? You were going to slay me?”

 

He was brushing one curl over and over, staring at the way it shined in his fingers. “It was a phase. I was over it.” His eyes were level with mine. “We’re on my turf now, things are going to be different. You’re not the Slayer anymore.”

 

“We’re on Council property, hardly your turf,” I smirked.

 

“Fine, I’ll behave…tonight.” He really has a devilish smile.

 

“Why did you want me to know?” I took the brush from him.

 

“It’s time yeah? I don’t want you calling me some other bloke’s name. I don’t want you thinking I’m someone I’m not. You’re here now, it’s different.” He took the brush back and stood up. “You came to me.” He went back to his work.

 

I hadn’t thought of it that way. I had waited before, because I had no choice but to wait, and hope he’d show up, but I was free now, and I had come looking for him. A corner had been turned. I had admitted something.

 

He leaned towards the bureau and grabbed a scrunchy and handed it to me, apparently, his hair styling skills didn’t extend beyond brushing. Here was that easy grace of his, he does what he can, then steps aside.

 

“Shower down the hall?” he assumed.

 

Maybe they didn’t have hot and cold running water in the crash house. “May I?” He picked up my towel, I motioned to my shampoo and shower gel, which he smelled before returning it to my things with a frown.

 

“Too girlie?” I guessed.

 

“Smells right nice on you,” he said, so as not to hurt my feelings.

 

I went down the hall to the bathroom and did my bedtime routine. I wondered what would happen if some Council member or three would happen across Spike in the hallway, worse yet if they recognized him for what and who he was. They only knew him as a Tribunal emissary, though to this day it boggles my mind that his past identity hadn’t come out. I’m convinced it was a cover up or some secret double agent thing.

 

“You weren’t kidding about the size of the bed,” he said as he squeezed in beside me. “I guess prefects had it no better than us, save the private room.”

 

“I don’t think the Council allows for sex.”

 

“Just not on the grounds, reputation to keep up and all.” He wasn’t bothered by any such thing and was getting handsy with me. “Is this enough privacy or are you going to make me wait til tomorrow?”

 

“Maybe half and half.”

 

“No fair, self consciousLuv. I want to hear those sounds you make, and the way you look, you’re fantastic.”

 

“Telling me I make sounds, is going too self-conscious about privacy,” I pointed out.

 

“Privacy is an American thing. Rest of the bloody world is too crowded for privacy. If you live a little, you get over it.”

 

What an image, people all around the world rutting like animals with someone in the next bed over or on the other side of a cardboard wall. He was right, I was used to my own room.

 

“You’re still wanting a bit of fun, though, right?” He was already working on that and had both of our bottoms off. I wondered why I ever bothered to wear clothing around him at all.

 

“Sure, have your naughty way with me within the limits and confines of this bed.” I lifted my arms over my head so he could slide my top off.

 

He took me from behind, lying side by side on the bed. He knew how much I liked it. As he thrust up into me I made a happy grunt, a QUIET happy grunt and sighed his name, “Spike.” He stopped.

 

“No, Luv.” It took my brain a few seconds to identify the issue. “William,” he reminded me. “Say it with me.” Slowly he screwed into me and I said his name, William, over and over until he came inside me with a shudder and a grunt, his teeth biting into my shoulder.

 

I didn’t mean to be obtuse or insulting but I wanted to know. “Why does it matter so much to you.”

 

“Because we’re not on business anymore. You don’t want me calling you Slayer. It’s impersonal.”

 

“You never called me Slayer in bed. Well, just that once.”

 

“Maybe it was personal then, for me as well,” he confessed quietly.

 

“It was personal for me too,” I said, but not in a whisper, I didn’t want it to come across as a secret. “But you didn’t tell me you were William then.”

 

“Didn’t want you to feel obligated.”

 

“Obligated?”

 

“To slay me. Buffy, it’s different now. You came looking for me, not hunting for me.”

 

“William.” I wanted to try it on, try it out, now, when we were just talking.

 

“Yes?”

 

Oh, how I wanted to say it. Eight ways to Sunday, I wanted to tell him that I loved him, but maybe it was just the afterglow...

 

In the morning, of course, I had appointments.

 

“I guess you can hang out here.” I hadn’t thought about that during the lusty haze of last night.

 

“Thought I’d check out the library,” he said jovially.

 

“The COUNCIL library?” I knew he was ballsy, but this was outrageous.

 

“I’ve always been curious.”

 

“What if they find you? What if they find out I brought you here?”

 

“What are they going to do, Luv? They can’t fire you.”

 

You can see why I was never really sure if he was on my side or not. This could be him using me to spy on the Council.

 

“You’re so provincial, Buffy.”

 

That was what he says when he thinks I am being uptight or naïve. He doesn’t think you should tell a woman she’s stupid unless you are in the midst of a shouting match. I told you he was weird.

 

He maintained that there was very little information the Council had that the Tribunal didn’t know about and vice versa. Now, how does that make sense? What’s the point of a separate organization if they have all the same information? Sometimes, when he raises that eyebrow at me when the subject comes up, I wonder if maybe they aren’t one organization after all, but seeing as he still works for one (or both) he never tells me if I’m right or not.

 

Off to the library, he went, via the covered walkways and a mackintosh he grabbed from a coat rack. He told me to trust that he knew how not to incinerate and sent me toddling on my way to my interview.

 

Spike is very much more British on his home turf than elsewhere. His accent is heavier and he uses more British terminology than he does when we are in other places. It’s the same everywhere we go, he always sounds somewhat British, but in the USA he mostly sounds American, in France he could almost pass as a Frenchmen. There is something about Spanish however, he just can’t get the accent right nor the rhythm of the words. He makes a hash of it and says he sounds like an American tourist jabbing a finger at a phrase book and mispronouncing everything. I can get by in broken Spanish but usually, he and I end up laughing uproariously at ourselves which only makes us harder to understand. But, as he said, I was now on his turf and he played the role of Englishman to a T.

 

Speaking of tea, and compliments of a rainy afternoon and a vampire-friendly overcast sky, he made me cancel my last appointment and whisked me off for tea and then, as promised, to a very nice hotel. Color me impressed. I don’t know how many desk clerks he had to kill to get us the room, or if we were on the Tribunal’s tab (he swore he wasn’t working for them at the time and they hadn’t forgiven him for his role in the Ovid event) but he had gotten us a lovely room. He assured me that he’d even swung for the American style as most hotel rooms there are much smaller and less posh.

 

“You’re turf, you could have--”

 

He gave me the eye, basically reminding me I had asked for a nice hotel and he had provided and now I should say thank you and appreciate it.

 

“It’s very nice,” I said, chastened.

 

“And I won’t feel like I’m in the prefect’s room about to be caned or worse…”

 

I guessed I didn’t want to know what “worse” was.

 

“Are we going out tonight?”

 

“Might hit a pub or two later.” His eyes traveled over me from head to toe and then to the bed. I know I’m making it sound like he is a sex addict, but he does settle down after a day or two, he’s just over-excitable at first.

 

Yeah, this is another Spike thing, he provides money, food, lodgings, whatever and women provide sex. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that’s a turn on for me, but it’s not really a turn-off. It’s not like he keeps score or anything, it’s more like the gentleman’s agreement I had with my mom. To be fair, Spike had made it clear from day one that he wanted to have a lot of sex with me. I signed on to this sort of relationship. It wasn’t like he wooed me for any length of time. We went from “aren’t you cute” to his fingers in my shorts, pretty quickly. If it sounds like I’m making excuses for him, I’m really not, just stating the facts.

 

As further proof that this isn’t just on him, I invite you to revisit how Ryan and I met and started dating. I was drunk and went home to bed with him. If I think a guy is hot, apparently I don’t require much else to get physical with him. See earlier chapter where I tell you I am not the mild mannered or moral heroine of the TV show. She’s way prettier than I am too. Spike still refers to me as cute, as well as a few other terms which are in no way dirty, but they are just between him and me and I’d be mortified if anyone else knew about them.

 

That particular night, in the posh lodgings (how awesome does that sound) we were Buffy and William, and William wasn’t taking no for an answer. He gave me a little time to get over myself, but it didn’t take much time at all. The surroundings were so different and he was so much himself. All thoughts of traitorous ho-dom and Ryan were far, far away, and having William doing those things he does, and a few new things to boot, suddenly wasn’t a problem anymore. I didn’t care if he ruined me eight ways to Sunday because just between you, me and the pocket watch, it was bloody brilliant.

 

He was lying back on the bed, hands crossed over his chest and I swear he was humming, not like actually humming, but his body was vibrating from the intense pleasure. Sort of like a purring cat without the sound. I was in pretty much the same state, but lying on my stomach and more with the repeated sighs than the vibrating thing. I kept one eye on him in case he began to levitate. I didn’t want to miss it.

 

At some point, he rolled over and crawled across the bed to me and began to chew on my shoulder again. It hurt because both shoulders were already quite bruised and red from his teeth.

 

“Maybe you should try an elbow,” I said, pulling away in pain. He did, and that proved wildly ticklish. I ended up elbowing him in the nose hard enough that it bled a little.

 

He discovered later, that he liked chewing on my hip bones quite as much as he enjoyed my shoulders, but during sex, my hips and his mouth weren’t usually close enough for him to chew on them, so it was more of a foreplay/afterglow thing and my shoulders continued to take the abuse.

 

Spike still likes to nip my earlobe just enough to make it bleed a tiny bit, and suck on it. So, basically, I am saying that while we didn’t do the things implied on the TV show, he does some things that can be kind of painful but as the character said, “I love the way you make it hurt in all the wrong ways.”

 

He’s had years, by now, to work on me to get my kink on, and I believe I have, but I’ll never divulge my secrets, and he’s too much of a gentleman to tell.

 

I got up later to use the bathroom, when I returned to the room and saw him lying on the bed, my heart swelled so much and leaped so high into my throat that I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I nearly puked from the power of the sensation.

 

I had a shocking sense of de ja vu, so powerful that for a moment, I thought maybe our sorcerers had sent us into a time zone of our own, but mostly it was simply the sight of him and the power of my reaction. I loved him so much, I just wanted to be next to him, tucked into my place under his right armpit where he would put me, just so, still my mouth with a finger and send me to sleep. He often arranged us so he could turn his head a tiny bit and kiss my hair or temple, or flip us either way so we were spooning, sometimes with me on the outside, but much more often with him wrapped around me protecting me from the world.

 

OK, here is more Spike weirdness (or gallantry) He always sleeps on the side by the door so, in the case of an attack, he’ll be able to meet it with me behind him. Sometimes we end up sleeping with our heads at the foot of the bed or, if we are in a king sized bed, there are times we lay crosswise because he always wants me on his right side. Spike is left handed.

 

This bugged the heck out of me the first few years we were together, but I’ve gotten used to it. Sometimes, sleeping with our heads down would drive me so wiggy that once he was asleep I’d flip myself around so my feet were near his head. Invariably he would wake up, catch me and suck on my toes until we either ended up having sex or I gave in and turned over. Once I was back in place, he’d wrap an arm around me to keep me there.

 

But I digress. It may sound like it, but we did not spend the entire few days left to us, having sex. We talked and walked and he showed me things that he found “charming” as he put it.

 

We only stayed in that hotel the one night. We spent another night in my room, and two nights in the flat of a bloke he knew. Apparently, Spike had guys all over. I met people who referred to him as Spike as well as those that referred to him as William or Will and one man who referred to Spike, twice, as Slayer.

 

Spike distracted me, and I am sure that any interviews I granted after his arrival, were half-hearted and incomplete. I just wanted to be with him. I couldn’t force myself to care about anything else. When Wendy asked if we could do dinner the night before I left, I felt overwhelming alarm that I was going to have to miss any of the few precious hours I had left to spend with him, but I also knew I MUST spend time with her. I had no idea when I’d see her again, and if she hadn’t tracked Spike down for me I wouldn’t have seen him at all.

 

I arranged to have dinner with her. My hands were literally trembling as I did my hair and got dressed.

 

“You’re not really going to spend your last night here.” Spike motioned around my room as he watched me dress. “Come on, Luv.”

 

“I have to. I’m here on their dime and I have to say some goodbyes after Wendy and I have dinner and--”

 

“And you have to come back to the flat and make love with me.” He slid his arms around me from behind. He’d said, “make love”. He’d never said that before.

 

He’d made love to me. We’d made love to each other. It wasn’t always crazed monkey sex. There were times when our shudders were less from friction and more from our hearts swelling so much that our ribs threatened to crack, but the words had never been said.

 

Nor had we talked about what next. We would be an ocean and one really big continent apart, come tomorrow at this same time, and he was still on the Tribunal’s shit list. I was starting school in two weeks, and the Council wasn’t going to be flying me back to England any time soon, if ever.

 

“Buffy.” He turned me in his arms and gave me a very stern look. The sort of look your mom gives you when she is about to tell you she is very disappointed in you, and she wishes she didn’t have to say it, but it needs to be said. “I love you.”

 

If it was anyone else on the planet telling me they loved me in THAT tone of voice, with THAT look on their face I would know they were being sarcastic ass holes but had Spike told me that with any other look on his face, or any other tone of voice, I don’t think I would have believed him. It was his disturbed discomfort that let me know he meant it. It was, after all, terribly inconvenient.

 

He pulled me up against his chest, and folded his arms around me and said “I really wish you didn’t have to leave,” in a tone so school marmish that coming from anyone else it would not have been the least romantic.

 

“I love you so much,” I said, glad he had vampire hearing because with my face all mashed into his shirt he wouldn’t have heard it otherwise. Of course, he already knew, but he deserved to hear it and I needed to say it out loud.

 

Saying a thing out loud really does make a difference. It’s like letting a butterfly out of a jar and watching it flit about and being able to see how others respond to it. Will they exclaim in joy, or retreat in fear, or will they chase it or clap with delight.

 

I’d been letting a lot of things free those weeks, sharing my tales of Slaying, but none of them was like this. Nothing compares to letting the “I love yous” fly and watching the other respond.

 

His face relaxed some, but not entirely and he still looked more concerned than I expected him to. My heart was beaming and I imagine my face reflected it.

 

He looked into my face. “You’re not going to say anything about waiting, or ruining or any such thing?”

 

“It didn’t change anything the other times.” It hadn’t, so why worry about it now?

 

“Buffy, Buffy, my Buffy.” William raised my face towards his and did that thing of his, holding my jaw open. It hurt a little, but less than my shoulders did.

 

*************************

 

Q&A

 

What are the differences between Riley and Ryan?

I can’t share much information on the real Ryan out of respect for his privacy, but I can share some information on the differences between the relationship TV Buffy had with TV Riley and mine with Ryan.

First, Ryan never knew I was the Slayer. Looking back, I still think that was the right choice, I needed a Slayer free zone in my life, and since Ryan wasn’t “the one”, there wasn’t a need for him to know that about me.

On TV, Riley was a grad student, but real life Ryan is more intelligent than Riley appears to be. They both very much knew what they planned to do with their lives. That was something I found very attractive about Ryan, he had a clue while I was feeling pretty clueless.

I just said Ryan was very intelligent, at the same time, in my story I told you I fed him a bunch of lies. Ryan knew I was a complicated person with a lot of issues. He also studied psychology. There were times I wondered if he considered me an interesting lab specimen, but he never treated me that way.

He knew there were things I wasn’t telling him and that there were a lot of things I never wanted to talk about. It was an agreement between us. There were things Buffy was weird about. He knew I was in professional therapy and he let it go.

He was sweet and occasionally protective, which I liked. It reminded me of Spike and had a sort of old world romantic feeling to it.

There was no sense of competition between Ryan and me, ever. He was a better student, and I was fine with that. He had no interest in martial arts or fencing, so he applauded my skills enthusiastically with no sense of inferiority.

I think he did feel a bit like Riley did with Buffy at the start of their relationship, where Riley thinks Buffy is pretty quirky and odd. Ryan did find me sort of amusing, but he wasn’t condescending about it. It was one of the things he loved about me. We used to tease each other sometimes, I’d call him a big weirdo and he’d say I was his little weirdo and then we’d be ridiculously happy that we had someone fun to be weird with.

Dawn and Ryan got along very well. Sometimes too well for my liking. Dawn was already at UCLA the year I dated Ryan and they had University life in common and I felt like the little sister sometimes when they would get to talking about classes and things. Dawn was more sophisticated and worldly than me and it never bothered me more than when she showed me up in front of my boyfriend.

She didn’t do it on purpose, and I don’t think either of them saw it that way, neither was thinking I was dumb Buffy, but I felt inferior. Those were the times I felt really resentful about Slayage. I had a very important thing I did that I should rightfully be proud of, but I couldn’t share it.

Real Ryan was handsome like TV Riley, but not as brawny. He was never my TA, we attended different schools.

Something that was an issue, in a sort of weird way, was Spike. Ryan didn’t mind that I didn’t like to talk about my injury or accident, but it was a red flag that I didn’t want to talk about my ex. If we had stayed together any longer I think it would have been a make it or break it issue.

I was always evasive about past relationships. I told him about Scott (but not Angel), and that Xander and I dated for awhile. It was pretty obvious that I wasn’t a virgin, so either I sort of slept around, the way I went home with Ryan the night we met, or I had had at least one serious relationship.

Dawn mentioned Spike, and right there things were instantly weird. I had an ex named Spike. When I said that we hadn’t been together long and it was no big thing, it got weirder because if it had been no big thing why was I so hesitant to talk about it?

I could lie about my accident and Slayer stuff, but I found it very difficult to lie about Spike, and there was absolutely nothing about the truth that translated well. Spike was this weird old guy who occasionally passed through town. He’d had inappropriate sexual relations with me when I was a teenager. Disappeared for a long period of time only to sweep through town again, sex me up and take off without even an “I’ll call you.” His name was Spike and he was involved with shady business. Oh, did I forget to add that he told me he sleeps with pretty young women wherever he goes?

No one wants that to be their girlfriend’s previous boyfriend. I didn’t want that to be my previous boyfriend, but it was something I just didn’t know how to lie about, so I said I didn’t want to talk about it.

TV Riley and Joyce don’t really know each other, and that part is the same, except it wasn’t because I didn’t bring Ryan around. My mom saw him regularly, they just didn’t talk much.

My mom and I had a few unpleasant discussions about it. I accused her of not liking Ryan and she said she wasn’t bound to like all my friends and boyfriends. I asked her what was wrong with him and she said nothing. He was nice, and she was happy I was happy.

But I wanted more from her. I wanted there to be the sense of belonging together that I felt the morning she and Spike wrapped me in blankets and gave me tea. I wanted not to have to squint very hard to imagine us as a family.

I didn’t like the idea that a boyfriend might ultimately put distance between me and my mother.

TV viewers often complain that Buffy’s relationship with Riley was boring, and compared to the heartache of Angel and the angry words and physical violence of Spike, I guess it’s fair to make that distinction, but in real life, a normal boyfriend was all kinds of wonderful. There is nothing overrated about a nice, handsome man who treats you right and enjoys the same things you do. That’s not boring, it’s the stuff of life. What is fun to watch on television is sometimes a bitch to live.

Of course, real life Spike wasn’t like TV Spike, so maybe dating Ryan was a little dull.

 

Seriously Buffy! Spike was the Slayer of Slayers and you act like it’s NO BIG DEAL!!!

Timeout. Reality check. A vampire, or other demon type, killing a Slayer isn’t out of the ordinary. It’s how Slayer’s die most of the time. The fact that Spike had killed two Slayers (he actually killed three, I have NO idea why they changed that for television) didn’t mean as much as they made it sound. An experienced vampire had at least an even chance, and probably the advantage, in a fight against a green Slayer.

What mattered was that William the Bloody decided that he was going to target Slayers specifically. He killed his first one on a fluke, and she was brand new. He went after the second one to impress a girl (one of Angel’s vampire harem). That is when he decided to make a thing of it. He hunted the second one down rather spectacularly, and kind of sadistically. I guess that’s what you do when you’re trying to prove something to a demonic mate.

It worked. He got some kinky sex and a dig at Angel out of it. But eventually he and his dark princess (whore) split. He parted ways with her saying he was off to bag himself another Slayer and says it was as much for a reason to put distance between them as anything.

So he went on his merry way to find and end Slayer number three having jolly good fun along the way. What he mostly did was use his reputation to alternately impress and terrorize his way around the globe.

Eventually, he did have a run in with his #3. He hadn’t intended to challenge her, but things went sideways, it came down to a very close, ugly fight between the two of them. At that point Spike really wasn’t in the market to kill Slayers anymore, it was more talk and reputation than anything, but it turned out he didn’t have a choice. It was him or her and he chose to save his own skin.

She was one of the great Slayers, and he regretted that it happened the way it did. He was no longer purely on the side of evil at that point and while he wasn’t there to help her cause, he said he certainly wasn’t there to fight it either. She found out William the Bloody, Slayer of Slayers was in the area and decided to take him out.

After that fight, he got out of the business. His reputation was known by some but he no longer made a point of announcing it. Vampires don’t show up on film photography. There were no old photos of William the Bloody, so it’s not like there were reliable wanted posters around with his picture on them.

He started going by Spike and most people never knew of the connection. Angel did know. He didn’t divulge Spike’s past because Spike was generally fighting on the side of good, and because he knew that had I known, I would have gone out of my way to challenge Spike on principle. Angel was probably right, as a young Slayer I would have felt some righteous anger and felt it was my duty to take him out.

If it came down to a fight to the death at that point, Spike likely had the advantage and Angel assumed Spike would choose his skin over my own. They agreed to keep it a secret.

That being said, Spike did taunt Angel with his proximity to me. It was a bit of a game to him in the early days. Spike agreed not to harm me, but he didn’t agree not to touch me. Spike says that at first, his interest in me was partly to find out why Angel was so keen on protecting me, but he swears that within the first five minutes everything changed. He felt we were two of a kind, and he wanted to protect me, mostly from myself because I was ridiculously committed and stupidly brave.

Ironically, Spike says that the first person he told he loved me, wasn’t me, it was Angel. Angel confronted him as to why he kept showing up at critical times and Spike told him it was because he loved me and wanted to make sure nothing happened to me. Angel knew him well enough to believe it.

The Tribunal, of course, knew Spike’s reputation, but there were only good reasons to keep it hidden. They could take advantage of his proven skills, but not arouse suspicion when they sent him on missions.

William the Bloody, Slayer of Slayers, fell off the radar in the mid 1950’s, but it was believed that William wasn’t dead. Tales and warnings of William were in the Watcher’s diaries and it was considered possible for him to show up at any time unannounced, to take out a Slayer. I had read cautionary tales of him, but he mostly felt like a boogie monster to me. The title represented fear itself, more than an actual bad guy. There were lots of things after me just because I was the Slayer.

That night, when Spike told me his name, it’s like my brain went, well of course he is. Of COURSE, he’s THAT William, who else would he be? I already knew who Spike was as a person and I knew a lot of the stories about how he got to be who he was. It was one more piece, but it didn’t feel like a critical piece any longer.

It was who he had been, the way I had once been the Slayer. I took out his kind, once he’s been the vampire who decided he was going to take out my kind. We were back to it not being personal.

He withheld the information from me while I was on active duty for obvious reasons, but he didn’t want me to not know. Like I’ve said before, Spike likes being mysterious to everyone BUT me. If we were ever going to be anything, we were going to be honest with each other.


	22. The One Where I Have a Sister

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With her Slayer duties behind her, Buffy focuses on her education and relationships

The One Where I Have a Sister

 

The UCLA campus is huge, with more students than Collinsville has citizens. If Dawn and I had never wanted to see each other, we could easily have done so. Seeing each other took planning, when school started we agreed to do lunch on Tuesdays.

 

Monday was official hangover recovery day. By Tuesday lunch we’d be recuperated, with weekend memories, such as they were, still be reasonably intact for story swapping. I’ve never been a big drinker, but I was definitely a party girl. I loved bar hopping, even if I was only drinking soda, and I would happily dance all night, with anyone of any gender to any music.

 

Even with my boogie woogie shoes on and my red plastic cup in my hand, I wasn’t exactly the coolest kid on campus. Spike’s word for me, “provincial”, came to mind over and over again. It wasn’t like I’d lived a sheltered life. I’d grown up in LA, and before my fairy Hell-mother dubbed me the Slayer, I’d been on track for Homecoming Princess and Prom Queen.

 

Even so, everyone, including Dawn, sometimes especially Dawn, seemed more worldly than I. Dawn said I was suffering from Slayer “head up my ass” syndrome. I had been so busy killing demons that I’d missed out on seeing the popular movies and going to concerts and all that normal stuff.

 

She wasn’t entirely wrong, but I hardly thought a refresher course on the previous decade was going to put me up there with the Big Men on campus. I think that I’m just kind of goofy and my sister is kind of slick.

 

I’m older, but when it comes to modern life, she was wiser. She’s also taller and that does give her an edge. Most of the time it seemed like she was the older sister because she was better at acting the part than I was. I didn’t go to her for advice, but that never stopped her from offering her suggestions and opinions generously.

 

It started the minute I got back from England and she and I went “back to school” shopping. She rolled her eyes at the term. It was another proof of how unsophisticated I was, but hey, that’s why we were shopping, even if that year it included towels and bedding sets more than pencils and notebooks.

 

I hadn’t said anything to my mother yet, about seeing Spike. I wasn’t planning to keep it from her, but I wanted some time to savor it on my own, with no one’s reactions or opinions to cloud things for me. I needed time to process it and define it in my own mind. I didn’t want someone to mold it into what they thought it was, and feed it back to me.

 

Dawn thinks boundaries were made to be trampled and that life is too short not to spill everything to your sister. This operates in both directions, meaning I know WAY more about her personal life that I care to, and she knows too many things about mine.

 

I don’t know how she could tell that something happened while I was in England. Looking back, I don’t think she did know, she just pulled the “I already know so you may as well tell me” trick, to get me to talk.

 

I believe it started with “OMG, what did you do?”

 

Seriously, she probably could have continued her rapid-fire questioning and have gotten me to admit to plotting against the queen, had she kept it up. What she does is shoot questions at you until she gets a hit that looks interesting, then she follows that along and soon you’re spilling your guts.

 

It took her about 6 questions before I was telling her I had spent time with Spike.

 

“So are you two a thing again? I mean you aren’t dating anyone? How long has it been since you’ve seen him? I’ll bet the two of you were humping like bunnies. Do you need to use protection with a vampire?”

 

I wasn’t even sure what all I’d admitted to, but I could tell by her face that I was in trouble.

 

“He took you to a crack house? Does mom know?”

 

“He took me where? No, not a crack house…Mom doesn’t know and don’t you tell her. He took me to a very nice hotel.”

 

“Was there champagne and rose petals? I could never figure out if he's a romantic, or more the type who throws down anywhere, anytime.”

 

“He’s kind of both but no rose petals.”

 

“Did he bite you? I’ll bet vampires are into all kinds of kinky sex play. Did the Council know you two were running around getting your dirty on?”

 

“He bites me some.” I rubbed at my still sore shoulder. “What do you consider kinky?”

 

“So I guess I was right about the fuck buddy thing. I don’t know why you’re so weird about it, everyone does it. It’s so much easier than relationships.”

 

“We are not fuck buddies!”

 

“Oh, so what are you saying? Are you in love?”

 

I don’t know how she does it.

 

“I, we…” Was this any of her business? If I denied it, was the god of romance going to come down and curse me? Did saying “I love you” mean the person was IN love with you or just that they had a deep and abiding affection towards you?

 

“Tell me you didn’t fall in love with someone on the other side of the planet,” she groaned.

 

“We, it’s not like we made any promises or anything…”

 

“It’s really romantic, which is cool, but real life isn’t Disney friendly. Did he actually tell you he LOVES you?”

 

I blushed, not because he had said it or because I had said it in return, but because she made it sound like something immature and idiotic.

 

“Don’t get me wrong, Spike is totally hot, which I why I support the fuck buddy thing. I mean. it’s perfect, hook up whenever you can but you’re both free to, you know, do what you need to do.”

 

“Dawn. Stop.”

 

“Sorry, backing off, none of my business.” She put her hands up in a sign of surrender.

 

“I just don’t want you putting words in my mouth,” I complained. “If you want to know what happened I’ll tell you, but we are NOT fuck buddies.”

 

She listened to my abbreviated and much edited, version of what took place

 

Then she said, “And what part of that proves you aren’t fuck buddies? I mean, you met up, fucked, and went your separate ways, until next time.”

 

See what I mean.

 

My sister had had many more lovers, partners or fuck buddies, whatever you want to call them, than me. She’d been with “five guys and two girls, but the girl on girl was really just for the experience, and I only ever fell for one of the guys, but they were all fun, in their way,” was how she put it.

 

Her stories, and experience made me feel so young and inexperienced that I sort of wanted to tell her the truth about how Spike and I got together. Yeah, that’s right little sister, we were getting in on in Giles’s office when I was 16 and when I was 17….which would only prove her fuck buddy theory.

 

Instead, I told her how Ryan and I met and started our relationship. She highly approved.

 

I couldn’t believe I was playing “rate your partners” with my sister. I did notice, I was much more forthcoming with information regarding Ryan and his performance in and out of the sack than about Spike. I couldn’t tell you if it was because I was in love with Spike, or because I was afraid that she might be right and I was wrong. My feelings for Spike, real or not, didn’t make much sense. There was no place for them in the real world.

 

I didn’t know where he was or when I’d see him again. There were no cell phones then, and he had no home base. If I wanted him, I could ask Wendy to send a message to Spike’s guy. Then I would have to wait and see if Spike got the message and found a way to track me down. We couldn’t even have been pen pals.

 

Talking to Dawn made my few days with Spike seem like a crazy dream, so crazy that it might not have even happened. It could have been a dream I had on the plane on the way home.

 

That was exactly why I hadn’t wanted to tell her. Telling Spike I loved him felt risky. He could have taken my words and turned them into anything, then handed them back to me on a platter, either better or worse off than when I said them. For Spike and I, it had worked out. We loved each other, there were hugging and creased foreheads and a bittersweet round of goodbye lovemaking.

 

Dawn had handed my love story back to me as chopped beef on burned toast. That’s a great Summer love story Buff…who you going to bang next?

 

I developed the habit of calling my mom on Wednesday. I figured she was feeling some empty nest syndrome. During my Slayer years, she was pretty adamant about my checking in, what with my life being in danger and all. We were close and I was having some “being out the nest” syndrome myself. Don’t get me wrong, I was loving being away from home and on my own. Being away from Collinsville was amazing on a level I cannot describe.

 

Check in Wednesdays became a thing. I guess they weren’t just MY thing. I called my mom on a Wednesday, several weeks into the school year, and the first thing out of her mouth is “If you even mention your sister’s name I am hanging up.”

 

Huh, what? Mom is the last woman on earth that would cut off communication with one of her kids, no matter what we did.

 

“Why? What happened?” I’d had lunch with Dawn the day before and all was right with her world.

 

“What happened, is that the two of you are driving me insane. Every week you call and all you talk about is what your sister is doing, and all SHE talks about is what you are doing and what the two of you discussed over lunch. You know what? I don’t care. I don’t need the details. You tell me what’s going on in YOUR life, and let your sister be the one who provides too much information about her’s.”

 

Were we really doing that? I guess I did mention some things Dawn told me, but I was sure it was purely on a “needs to know” basis. And just what had my sister been telling my mom about ME? With Dawn’s flair for the dramatic, I could just imagine.

 

“So, I hear you’ve joined a mail order cult.” My mom jumped right in to give me an example of Dawn’s quick and dirty on Buffy.

 

“A CULT?”

 

“Shave your head, meditation, drink some tea made of a middle Eastern wacky weed.” She repeated what Dawn had told her.

 

“Mom, it’s a meditation group, and there is no wacky tea drinking.”

 

“And you’re not dating a wannabe Swami?”

 

“No, but a really cute guy did invite me to the group. His name is Max and he’s pre-med.”

 

“You didn’t go to the clinic with a venereal infection?”

 

“I went because I was worried I had a chest infection and a cough that wasn’t going away.”

 

“Now you see what I am dealing with? I get a call from her on Tuesday’s telling me you’ve basically lost your mind and I can’t sleep wondering if any of it is true, then you call on Wednesday and give me the Dawn report.”

 

“But everything I tell you is true,” I said in my defense.

 

She laughed.

 

“It is!”

 

“Apparently only half true, or maybe she just dresses it up for my benefit. It is much more exciting coming out of her mouth. So tell me about the cute guy.”

 

I did experiment (some call it shop) with religions, especially my first year at UCLA. My experience with the supernatural felt too heavy to carry alone, and there was a smorgasbord of options available. It was also a good way to meet people with entirely different experiences and point of views about life and what went on behind the scenes. It’s fascinating, the things people come up with, to explain the inexplicable.

 

Most of my experiments were quick and dirty. A breeze through a pamphlet or a head in the door at one meeting told me all I needed to know. Sometimes I stuck around for awhile, that was often because of the people. I might not have actually believed the lists of faith facts, but I meshed with the people who did, and that had to mean something. Maybe we were speaking different languages about the same things.

 

Dawn found my faith searching worrisome. She didn’t believe in much of anything, from what I could see. She dabbled in some New Age things when one of her friends showed interest, but I think the things she liked best about it was the jewelry and music to zone out to.

 

I went back and read over what I’ve written about my sister here, and while all of it is true, I also don’t want to make her look shallow or stupid. She’s neither and never has been.

 

Dawn experimented a lot, in many areas of life, because she felt like she needed the back round for her acting and dancing. It’s a bank to draw on and she’s constantly making deposits. She rarely falls into doing anything out of ignorance, but of course, no one always makes good decisions.

 

She tried things out because she wanted experience, and I get that. I had some catching up to do myself, but I tried things out more because I wanted answers or at least reasonable estimates.

 

Dawn was worried that I took the religious stuff too seriously. I felt more like I was trying them on like jackets to see if any of them fit, and trying them on like glasses to see how the world looked from their point of view. I didn’t feel any threatening oncoming conversions.

 

One Tuesday she plunked a flyer down in front of me. “Have you checked this out?” It was advertising an open meeting for a group that studied the paranormal.

 

“THESE are your people Buffy, check it out.” She leaned over and ran her finger over a line of text. “Demons, ghosts, creatures of myth and legend.”

 

“It also says ESP and teletransportation.” I ran my finger over another line.

 

“Sneers the girl who has been time shifted, possessed by a brain worm, and visited by the spirit of ancient Slayers.” She gave me her signature look.

 

“That’s different.” I’m not sure it actually was, but I didn’t want the people who wore aluminum foil hats and looked for space ships to be MY people.

 

My mother wasn’t bothered by my rambling through the roll-a-dex of religions. College was for trying out new things and she knew I had a lot to sort out. Anything that might help was fine by her. Still, I know that there are certain religions she would have seriously tried to steer me away from, had I gotten overly involved. She kept an eye on me but she never told me I was deluded.

 

No amount of pleading, on Dawn’s part, got me to attend a meeting of the paranormal. I think she basically wanted me to check it out because she thought it sounded interesting, but it didn’t fit into her image or schedule.

 

Several weeks into the winter semester, I received some disturbing news. The new Slayer was dead. It was a punch to the stomach. She was only 15. She died in the line of duty, but in a prosaic, almost disappointing way.

 

She had a severe allergic reaction to a type of demon poison. About half of all humans react that way to this particular poison. I wasn’t one of them apparently because I’d been similarly poisoned and here I still am. It was a clear case of “there but for the grace of genetics go I”.

 

The news hung over me. I felt like her shadow was following me around, seeing me do all the things she would never do, living the life denied her. Why had I made it? What was so special about me? She wasn’t haunting me out of anger, she was haunting me out of longing, and shock. If only…

 

It was probably just me haunting myself. I had quite a few long phone sessions with my therapist following that. She assured me that it was common, for people who escaped a tragedy, to wonder why they were saved while others died. Sometimes the feeling was so overwhelming, they felt they needed to do something special with their lives to make up for it, or to apologize to the person who died, and their families, for having survived. That was how I felt.

 

I wondered if I had been mentoring her (which was kind of crazy because she was in Portugal and I didn’t live there, or speak Portuguese) would she have made it. Nothing I could have said to her would have made her less allergic to demon venom.

 

My mother was shaken up by the news as well and admitted she felt like she should apologize to that other mother, or at least try to comfort her. It was silly because there was nothing she could say that would be comforting. Her daughter was alive and the other woman’s wasn’t.

 

Whammy the next, was the news, four months later, that the next Slayer had been killed in the line of duty. That Slayer had just turned 16 and was killed while taking out a vampire nest. It was a situation like one I had dealt with, a smoke screen thrown up to hide a more serious covert threat.

 

My mentoring her probably wouldn’t have helped either. It was something the Council and her Watcher should have known about. She was ambushed by a group they should have been aware of.

 

Even so, the feeling of being haunted escalated. I felt that I needed to do something super awesome with this life that felt like both a gift and a burden. I had to make up for the Slayers who died in the line of duty.

 

My try-a-faith endeavor ramped up, and I registered for a too ambitious class schedule for the next semester. My mother, Giles, and my advisor talked me down. I didn’t have to become a chemical engineer and save the world. I wasn’t responsible for anyone but me and didn’t owe the Slayers past, present or future, my life. I’d earned the right to live the way I wanted to live.

 

I didn’t believe that. How had I earned it? I mean yes, I worked hard and sacrificed but without my crew, I wouldn’t have made it. It wasn’t something I did alone or accomplished because I was smarter or better than other Slayers. I just got lucky, over and over again.

 

Spike tells me that basically, that is how we all stay alive. We get lucky over and over until we don’t, then we die. We escape disease, accidents, murderers, and any number of nasty things, one more time than the person next to us. Sometimes it has to do with choices we make, but a lot of it is dumb luck, or at least far beyond our control.

 

When you’re young you don’t want to believe that. You can’t believe that. There is a need to believe that you can change things and make the world a better place, that you can do more than just outwit the odds.

 

That’s a great thing, and it leads people to work hard, sacrifice and lead revolutions, but it can take a toll as well. You can feel empowered, but you can also feel haunted, and like a huge failure for not making more of yourself.

 

I didn’t want to go from being some kind of hero to a garden variety failure, with all my potential pissed away on useless causes and an equally useless degree. What if I could be the one who discovers a cure for a disease or turns out to be a latent musical virtuoso? See how all over the place I was?

 

One of the things that helped keep me grounded, while I was exploring the divine universe one faith at a time, was running. I joined a running group on campus. Sometimes we ran on a track, sometimes through the woods or up in the mountains. I wasn’t interested in marathons or speed. I did like endurance runs, I still do, but accolades didn’t mean much to me.

 

I had wanted a trophy so badly in high school, but now I didn’t care. I wanted to feel the earth under my feet, and the slight hint of a whistle of wind, in my ear. I was comforted by the taste of sweat and a bit of ache in my muscles and joints. It counteracted the sense of timeless “woo woo” I got from talking religion and metaphysics with others.

 

I never fully recovered from the phase shift. Earlier, I mentioned my pinky nail, but there are more serious issues as well. I go through periods of intense deja vu, especially around the anniversary of the Ovid incident. My immune system plummets. I get cold sweats and the nightmares of being at the bottom of the sea become more frequent. I having visions of Xander tackling my body, my mother playing backgammon with Spike. I hear the growl of frustration when Ovid failed to suck me into the void. I feel like I am exploding into anxious clouds of glitter.

 

Running helps me feel integrated, and helps counteract all that. It reminds me I am in the here and now, my feet pounding the pavement, my lungs breathing air. Each run has a beginning, middle and an end, and I get to choose what those are.

 

I had a difficult time choosing a major. I felt like I should do something hugely important and also realized I had no talent for the huge and important. I don’t have the mind of an engineer or a doctor. I’m not into the arts like Dawn. What I am, is a lot like my mother, strong, gritty and down to earth.

 

There isn’t a major for being a mom. It also isn’t a position that brings in a steady income with a dental plan and an IRA account. I talked to a recruiter for the military, thinking that down to earth and gritty were pretty much the job description.

 

My mother put her foot down over that. She told me that it was not the fit for me nor was I going to put her through any more years of hell worrying about me dying on the job.

 

I owed her. She used those words, and that is the only time. She said I owed her for what she’d been put through. She was literally crying from rage that I was even considering such a thing. I have never seen her like that before or since, even in the worst of my Slayer gig.

 

She accepted it then because I had no choice, but the idea that I would voluntarily drag her through that hell, was like me twisting a knife in her gut. It was thoughtless beyond words.

 

I hadn’t considered what that might do to my mother. Self-absorbed Buffy was too busy thinking about her poor directionless self, and what she was going to do with her life. I forgot that my life overlapped other lives and that it wasn’t just a case of people loving me, I had a responsibility to love them back.

 

I was bad about that. I felt the love, but I often didn’t know what to do with it. I love you mom, then I would stomp all over her heart while I was trying to learn some new dance in life.

 

When I wasn’t feeling guilty for having survived Slayerhood, I was feeling angry that having survived Slayerhood, I didn’t get a boost of “living in the real world powers”. I was now crewless. I could have benefitted from having a Watcher, who had my back. I was my own watcher, and I felt like I was watching myself be a big doofus.

 

There were times I walked around campus and felt like I got this. Look at me world, student extraordinaire! I had friends, was busy in clubs, I ran, I had a sister and mom who I was close to. Heck, I even saw my dad once a month. Then I’d get back to my room and wonder what the hell I was going to do with my life.

 

Sometimes my eyes would go over to the lamp on my bedside table and wish like hell that the crucifix was still there. I wasn’t sure if the power was in crucifix itself, the comfort of repeated prayer or the fact that Spike had traveled across the planet to bring it to me. I had nothing to remind me of Spike other than my memories, and my memories of Spike were no comfort.

 

It took a long time before I didn’t feel that I was primarily defined by my former role as Slayer. I was like a child actor who doesn’t really know what to do now that their show has been canceled. That was exactly what I had been warned about by the Council, the previous Slayer, and Spike. I had to get past myself. I had to embrace life the way I had embraced my calling, it was the only way to survive and thrive.

 

My relationship with Ryan had been a good dry run. He had nothing to do with Slaying, but we’d made it work. I could do that again.

 

For all that I felt that Dawn was more worldly and that she was my mentor on campus, there were times when I was very much the big sister. There were days I would come back to my room, weary from the day and she’d be waiting for me saying, “What took you so long” because she wanted to talk.

 

She complained that she couldn’t borrow most of my clothes because I was shorter than her (and bustier), but she liked to try out my makeup and see which books I was reading.

 

She came to me when she fell in love. Dawn was in drama and dance and he was a theater engineer. He handled lighting, sound, and rigging, all the technical things required for performance.

 

They knew each other and spoke on a regular basis, but they weren’t dating. Still, she said it was love, not a crush. He wasn’t even hot. (She was very disappointed in herself for being foolish enough to fall for a guy that wasn’t hot)

 

Dawn guessed that I knew a thing or two about difficult and unrequited love. She didn’t know the details of my relationship with Spike, but she knew I was in love with him and he wasn’t around. Certainly, he would be, if he loved me back.

 

She had a point, but she knew nothing about vampires and the reality of living with a near immortal’s perspective on existence. A human in love can’t stand to be away from their lover for even a day. He could easily survive not seeing me for a decade or two (or so I believed at the time).

 

My first reaction was the old “tear the bandage right off”. Tell him. What could be easier? Get it out there, and either it flies or it crashes.

 

Luckily I didn’t say that I just thought it and then kicked myself. How many years had it taken me to say “I love you” out loud to Spike? And he and I were far more of a couple than Dawn and Landon.

 

At first, I thought Dawn just wanted a sounding board, someone to hug her when she found out Landon was dating someone in the costume shop, but she came asking for advice.

 

“Spike has other women, right? He must…how do you stand it?”

 

“I mostly don’t let myself think about it.” I’m sure that was all kinds of helpful.

 

“I think it’s love Buffy, but can you be in love with someone you don’t know, like really really know? We talk, and I feel like I know him but I can’t actually KNOW him. What he thinks and feels inside. This is like a massive crush that’s gone off the rails.”

 

“What about that other guy, Tony, I thought you were sort of seeing him.”

 

“Well yeah, but that’s just…coffee…I think he might be gay.”

 

Dawn went through a phase where she thought everyone might be gay. When I didn’t have a guy by the fourth week of school, she thought I should try dating women. She asked if I thought my mom was gay and said my dad might be gay because he went golfing twice a week with some friend of his for awhile.

 

“I just need to know if he likes me, that sounds so 4th grade. Should I keep hanging around or back off?”

 

“Ask him out for coffee.” That was the go to, safe. non-date choice, the litmus test for all relationships platonic or otherwise. All college students are caffeine addicts, if for this reason alone. You can judge if you want to sleep with someone based on how they take their coffee.

 

“Too obvious, if I just show up out of the blue and say “let’s have coffee” he’ll know what I’m doing.”

 

“How is that a bad thing? If you’re interested in someone, you do the coffee thing.” Really, this was a no-brainer.

 

“I don’t think he’s the coffee type.”

 

“It doesn’t matter, it’s the universal language. If he’s not the coffee type he can get that expensive fizzy lemonade or iced tea.”

 

“I know he’s not in love with me.”

 

Well, no. He didn’t really know her and he was dating someone else. And face it, Dawn can be pretty acerbic and lots of people don’t like her at the start. It can take a bit of getting to know her.

 

“Have you ever asked a guy out for coffee?” she checked.

 

In that sense, Spike had ruined me. I had become a woman who wanted men to do the asking. He pursued me. I wasn’t eager to be told a guy wasn’t interested and make a fool of myself, but I also hadn’t fallen for anyone who wasn’t interested back.

 

“No,” I admitted. I left out the “I never had to.” part. I don’t think she ever had to either. She had asked men out many times, but those times it hadn’t mattered as much, whether or not he said yes.

 

“He’s going to say yes,” I told her, and I believed it was absolutely true. It took a lot for a guy to turn you down. Unless he and costume shop girl were serious, he was going to be open to coffee with my fun sister.

 

That was the most insecure I’d ever seen her or at least the most insecure that she’d ever let on to me. I was tempted to just type that she had it bad for this guy, but I’m going to say that she had it good, because love is good. At least real love is.

 

“How do you know you love him?” I asked her one day. I wasn’t challenging her, I was curious how other people gauged their feelings for a person.

 

It took me awhile before I felt like I understood my feelings for Spike enough to label them “love,” even to myself. They felt big, SO big, that my heart was going to explode. When I felt that and I didn’t “have” him, I considered it a crush. When I had him and those feelings were just as big, I thought it had to be love.

 

I had definitely been confused for awhile by all the lusty feelings. My brain felt like it would melt, my girl parts felt like they were going to die of starvation and even my stomach was knotted in near pain. When I had gotten my lust addressed and my heart still felt like it was going to explode, I decided there must be love going on.

 

I wasn’t sure how to ask my sister if it was her pelvis or heart that was in meltdown, without it sounding like I was insulting her. “I respect your feelings, but are you sure you don’t just want to fuck him, as opposed to deal with all his weird shit?”

 

Listening to Spike talk about fly fishing in his youth had felt like the most amazing thing ever.

 

Having Spike ask me what I wanted to do tomorrow was incredible. All he had cared about, in his post-coital haze, was what we would do with our hours together. That was love. My answer was “us”. I want to do “us” in whatever form that happened to take.

 

Dawn looked defeated. “I know I love him because I’ve felt every other feeling before and this is different. It’s all that’s left.”

 

I guessed she was right, but love has that other thing going on as well. You may think you know what it is and how it feels, and then it takes you places you didn’t even know were possible.

 

“The way you feel, is it like impossible to feel that way?” I knew I sounded sort of crazy asking her that, but I couldn’t think of any other way to say it.

 

“YES, that’s exactly it. Gah..it’s like what is this thing? You know? I feel totally wrecked because I don’t even know how to feel this. I think I must be doing it wrong because it makes no sense.”

 

Yeah, she had it bad.

 

I wish I could say it worked out for her, but it didn’t. She never asked him for coffee and he and the girl from the costume shop were still dating when Dawn decided that she wasn’t returning to UCLA the next year. She was headed for New York City. She didn’t leave due to a broken heart, but I think it made her happy that she wasn’t staying.

 

I wasn’t happy she wasn’t staying. I loved our time together being sisters, and I had a panic attack or two when I found out she wasn’t coming back. I even thought about going to New York too, maybe sharing a place, but I didn’t want to change schools again. I didn’t want to be that far from my mom. I had carved a pretty cool place for myself at UCLA.

 

I was still majorly majorless, but I had my feet under me in a few other ways. Academically I needed to get my act together. The Council would pay for four years at a four-year University. I already had a lot of classes that transferred from the time I put in in Collinsville, so it wasn’t like I had to graduate in two years. I could putz around a little and figure things out.

 

University is more than taking classes and getting a degree. For me it was more about learning to live with options, having actual choices that were going to affect my future and went beyond the bounds of right of refusal. I also had knowledge at my fingertips, unlimited knowledge as opposed to “needs to know”.

 

The workload was a big adjustment for me. I was capable of discipline but hadn’t applied it to school work to the degree that UCLA required. I took advantage of peer tutoring to learn how to take notes and study. I took advantage of workshops on how to write papers.

 

I felt a little weird at first, like maybe signing up for those things meant I was an idiot, but when I met the people in the program that was far from true. They were people who wanted to succeed, like I did, and realized they had a better shot if they got help.

 

“Think of them as your new crew.” My mom advised. “It’s smarter to take advantage of them than to fuck it up on your own.” Good point mom.

 

Getting tutored was no different from joining groups to check out religions or meditation. I wanted to know something, so I asked people who knew.

 

Wendy was a whiz at school. So much so that sometimes I felt like she was pretty condescending to me about my academic issues. She’d use the voice, “Oh, that’s great Buffy.” like she was talking to a little kid; like she was proud of me for doing the thing that a billion other kids younger than me were doing. She was the wrong person to talk to about school. No matter how nice she was about it, I always felt dumb in comparison.

 

Luckily, we had plenty of other things to talk about. Even though she didn’t come out and say it, I think that sometimes she felt the way I did about school, about her sorcery training. It wasn’t all a breeze to her. She felt out of her league a lot of the time. She was hot shit in Collinsville, but a lightweight compared to the people she was learning from through the Council. It was the first time she’d been a lightweight in anything she truly set her mind to.

 

That worked against her. Confidence was a double-edged sword when it came to sorcery. You have to have as much confidence in knowing that you don’t know, as you do in knowing that you do. Thinking you knew too much was dangerous. Not being confident in what you knew, was just as dangerous.

 

When we got past the “hey, things are going great” first few minutes of our phone calls, then we could be honest about the things that weren’t going so great, the things that were way confusing, and tiresome.

 

I asked her, a few times, to find out what she could about Spike. All she got was that he was unavailable. I didn’t think he would have told Oscar to hide his whereabouts from me without good reason, so I took it to mean he was on some kind of mission that actually made him unavailable, or that he was hiding from something. Wendy never acted cagey or evasive about it, so I took her at her word.

 

Dawn suggested that we should still do Tues lunch, via phone, after she moved to New York City. We didn’t make every Tuesday even when we were both on UCLA campus, but we made it more often than not. With a three hour time difference, Tuesday lunch didn’t work across the continent. We aimed for a once a week phone call, and sadly, that fell by the wayside pretty quickly.

 

Her new life swallowed her up. Life in New York was even more exciting than life in LA. It was different enough that she said it felt like a foreign country. She was absorbing it like a sponge, and I couldn’t even relate to what she was experiencing and doing. We were speaking a different language. When I asked her about dating, her response was, “Who has time to date?” as if I had asked her something totally absurd.

 

My mother said Dawn often didn’t return her phone calls. We worried that maybe she had gotten involved with drugs. Dawn told us she dabbled, but she didn’t have a “problem”, she was just busy living.

 

I was busy living too, but starting to get seriously worried about my inability to settle down to one area of study.

 

I went to England again, the next Summer, to see Wendy and Giles and visit Kelly, the other former Slayer. She had her baby with her, along with her seven-year-old daughter. She juggled the two kids with a sort of happy awkwardness, laughing at herself and how being Slayer strong and coordinated didn’t translate into mommy skills as much as she’d hoped.

 

It was clear she loved the kids and they loved her. She was fine with being awkward and somewhat sleep deprived. I felt like that was what I wanted. I wanted to be wearing that kind of a goofy smile, and for my hair to be messy because I hadn’t had time to worry about it and I didn’t even know how messy it was because I had forgotten to check the mirror that morning.

 

I loved the confident way she handed little Charlie over to me, while she fought with a juice box that had a faulty straw, for Ellie. Charlie was just as confident in his ability to charm me. He tried to yank a handful of my hair out and suck on my chin while drooling and slapping at the same time. I admit I was extremely charmed.

 

I had no idea I liked kids before this. I loved the gritty, drooly, physicality. It was no holds barred, life at its most basic. Having kids is like sex or fighting or a really good conversation with a friend. It’s total exposure, total involvement. I have trouble with many aspects of propriety. I know how to be polite and which subjects not to bring up in public but I crave something raw in my life. Running, eating, fucking, laughing. I like bare feet and swimming in cold water, and live music and anything unrehearsed or a situation that might go wrong.

 

I don’t like feeling awkward. I work hard at getting good at doing things I like, so I don’t have to, but I don’t play it safe just so I never have to feel awkward.

 

University helped me get past that too. I grew comfortable asking stupid questions and dropping courses that were a waste of my time. I always remembered how Spike was patient with me because he knew I’d get over myself.

 

I tried to do that with Dawn as well. I told myself that whatever was going on with her, she was going to get over and whatever weirdness we were having as sisters would pass if I just kept moving forward. We were sisters and nothing was going to change that, and nothing was worth putting that in jeopardy.

 

Dawn was less patient with herself and less patient with me. I got the “why are you so stupid” attitude from her a lot and much of it was underserved. She acted like I should understand her life as a performer and all the things it involved. I didn’t, and there was no way for me too. That grated on my nerves and she used it as an excuse to not waste her time on me. I was too stupid to be bothered with, so she didn’t return my calls.

 

When she mentioned a new friend or boyfriend and I didn’t know who she was talking about, she behaved as if I was an idiot for not being up to speed. When she was dating a woman, her attitude was where was I when the memo went out that she wasn’t with Grey anymore she was now in an open relationship with Audrey.

 

Dawn isn’t a bitch. Her life at that stage was all encompassing and she really didn’t have the time or patience to explain it to us, while she was working double time to make sense of it herself.

 

It was hard to be the one on the sideline while Dawn was going through that, and Wendy too. I understood their self-absorption as being what I was going through myself. We were all trying to get in step with our own lives. I missed them, I missed sharing what I was going through with them. I really valued their input and friendship but for a few years, none of us had what each other needed. We had to find that from someone else, someone who was in step with where we were.

 

Another whammy, was when I got the news that Giles had a baby on the way and was planning his wedding. I admit I was surprised by the order of those events. Giles wasn’t stodgy, but I expected him to do things in the “right order”.

 

I was in frequent touch with Kelly, the former Slayer. She was someone I did feel in step with, even though she was older than me. I arranged to stay with her when I traveled for Giles’s wedding.

 

My mother opted not to attend the wedding, which surprised me. She bore Giles no ill will but said that she didn’t want to be surrounded by that atmosphere again.

 

She knew I would never really put it in my past and probably shouldn’t, but it wasn’t her world now and she was happy with it that way. Physical distance had worked for the divorce and she was applying that strategy again. She wanted to keep those strings cut.

 

Of course, traveling to England, I asked Wendy to try to track down Spike. Again, I heard he was unavailable. I worried that maybe he was permanently unavailable, as in someone, somewhere had eliminated him. Some nights, I would shoot up straight in my bed, sick with worry over it.

 

Wendy did some poking around and said it was certain that he was still around, just “unavailable”. That word will forever be in air quotes for me and Spike. We still joke about it and what it really meant.

 

In our house, when something goes missing, seemingly vanished into thin air, we refer to it as “unavailable” as opposed to lost. Same thing when someone is sleeping, they are “unavailable”. Sometimes someone’s common sense also becomes “unavailable”. Considering how painful those times were, it’s amazing that we can joke about it now. I guess we both got over ourselves.

 

Q&A

 

How many Slayers did William kill and were they active Slayers or retired?

There are shockingly few Slayers who lived long enough to retire. I was only the 5th Slayer EVER to survive. (one more made it after me). All the Slayers Spike killed were active and there were three in all.

The first Slayer he killed was brand new. He said it went something like this.

“Will, did you hear the Slayer rose in Alsace?” (region of France near the German border)

“Phffft.” (Spike doesn’t care for mountains)

A few months later…

“Will, did you hear a new Slayer rose in Gascony?” (region of France dear to Spike’s heart)

“I think I’ll take a trip!”

Spike went there, visiting friends, intending to check her out. She came after one of his friends. He killed her, irritated that she imposed on his visit. He was unimpressed, though he had heard tales of amazing Slayers.

Just the same, he bragged about bagging a Slayer to one of the vampire women (whores) in Angel’s band, and she goaded him to bag another.

Two Slayers later, one arose in Italy in Siena (which he refers to as romantic). To impress the lady vampire (whore) he hunted her down, and killed her, ritualistically (lots of fancy threats and words and humiliation). He and the vamp lady (whore) drank her blood and had triumphant vampire sex, then flaunted it to Angel.

The last one he killed was in Paris. She was a year shy of retiring. He was in Paris on Tribunal business, she heard he was in town, basically through the intel of an underworld hang out like Willy’s and came after him. He killed her in self-defense and says he wishes it hadn’t come to that.

He says there isn’t much valor in hunting down young girls. Still, personally, I think he likes to check them out. He’s made “soft pilgrimages” to a number of places where Slayers have risen. He says it’s as good as any reason to travel, and where there is a Slayer there is action and sometimes it’s action he wants in on.

I’m the only Slayer he’s ever been involved with. He says he would have loved me anyway, but he wouldn’t have met me if I wasn’t the Slayer so it’s a moot point.

I say he wouldn’t have loved me if I hadn’t been the Slayer because I don’t think he would have. I wouldn’t have been nearly as pissed off about life and he liked my attitude when I was pissy over something. Happy Buffy was sort of insipid.

The reason you keep seeing (whore) in this response is because of Spike. I tend not to refer to women that way. If they are actually “in the business” I refer to them as prostitutes.

Spike, on the other hand...and since it’s his story, he told me that he wants it on record that the vampire in question was, in his estimation, a whore. Obviously, that didn’t stop him from taking up with her for a number of years. Spike had been known to be something of a ho himself.

Spike and I have actually had some very interesting discussions on what it takes to earn the label whore/ho. He says it’s a state of being more than the sum of an equation of how many partners one has within a given time frame.

I asked him if he considered a few of my very insignificant but naked liaisons in college to have put me into the category of ho-dum. He says no, that it has to do with what is seeking to gain from the liaison that makes the difference.

Doing it for kicks, to him, isn’t a problem. Doing it for status, power, or to make someone else jealous = whore. Doing it for money, food, shelter is business and he assigns no judgment on it.

He freely admits to having periods of time where he was a man whore and stole other blokes women just to prove he could.

Sorry, I know that has nothing to do with killing Slayers, but we got to talking about it so...I keep telling Spike he needs to write his own book. He says I’ll be sorry if one day he takes me up on that.

 

Is Wendy still working for the Council?

She is, but she has moved stateside again. She has always been close to her parents and siblings and wanted her own kids to grow up near family.

The Council has employees all over. She also freelances and is an ordained minister in an alternative faith community. Wendy also has a garden business that sells potted herbs, garden stones and birdbaths that she designs herself.

 

Are you close to Dawn?

Yes, but our relationship still runs in cycles. Meaning that sometimes we don’t talk to or see each other for a long time, but it’s just because we are busy with life. Then we will get together and talk for 5 hours or whatever.

I still feel like there are subjects we avoid, and I don’t really know why. Maybe all relationships are like that. We don’t see each other often, but that is due to work/life.

 

What about Xander?

Xander’s wife was uncomfortable with our relationship and though we stayed in touch in a general way, Christmas cards, major life events, I can’t say we remained close friends.

He lost his wife to cancer a few years ago and has gone through some rough times. Wendy and he have reconnected to a degree but he and I still aren’t close.


	23. The One Where Life Happens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy takes advantage of normal life and does normal things only to find that her past is anything but.

The One Where Life Happens

 

Giles’s wedding was a simple affair. He wanted all his “people” there but there wasn’t a lot of frou-frou or pomp and circumstance. His wife, Olivia, “was out to here” with her pregnancy and was glowing from both being a bride and a soon-to-be mother. Giles was glowing as well. I felt more than a little jealous, but oodles of happy for him.

 

Look at him moving on! I wanted that kind of happy. I wanted someone to hold my hand and kiss me. I wanted a baby to drool on me and a too big dog in the house, knocking things over with its tail. Kelly and her husband Matt had all that, along with a house cat missing an ear and a fish pond in the yard.

 

I was nearly finished at UCLA with a BA in nothing special, and no big plan for what I wanted to do with my life. I did have a little plan. I wanted THIS. Marriage, kids, dog, the whole darn thing. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of a mortgage or driving a mini-van, but the rest of it looked pretty attractive.

 

The Council, once again, offered me the opportunity to mentor. This time the Slayer was in the States, Cleaveland, Ohio. 

 

Recalling what meeting Kelly had meant to me, I agreed to meet the Slayer. I wanted to share encouragement and camaraderie with another young woman.

 

Ceena was a belligerent Slayer. She was kind of like Faith. She would fight anyone and anything. She didn’t resent her Slayer gig, she reveled in it.

 

Ceena couldn’t believe I’d survived my tour of duty. I was obviously a lightweight, what with me liking kids and dogs and having a fancy UCLA college degree. Nothing she had heard about me, and I was surprised at how much she had heard, impressed her.

 

I knew that the main reason I had survived was I had smart, dedicated people on my side, and a vampire who traveled across the planet carrying a priceless relic and a scheme in his head to save me.

 

I wouldn’t have made it without Spike. Whatever my suspicions were at the time as to WHY he did it, I knew that I owed him my life. His scheme wouldn’t have worked without the help of the rest of my crew, so he doesn’t get all the credit, but it was HIS scheme (or the Tribunal’s, or the Council’s who may be the Tribunal)

 

Ceena had a point, it wasn’t all about me and my mad Slayer skills. I hadn’t kicked ass harder than any Slayer before me, but I had been willing to go along with wiser heads than my own, and that was just as important as other Slayer skills. Ceena didn’t think so.

 

She was sure the Council was out to get her and thought cooperating was for wusses. She’d slay any vampire in sight, Tribunal or not, Angel or not. (no, she didn’t kill Angel but she would have if she could have) Kill them all and let the Powers That Be vacuum up the dust.

 

Clearly, my presence wasn’t wanted. I swear she flipped me the bird when we said goodbye. Great, I was relieved of mentor duties at least for the next 6 years.

 

What with my new love of children, my mom suggested I stay in school to get a teaching certificate. Kids, I liked, not so much school books, class planning, and homework. In case you don’t already know this, teachers have about 10 times as much homework every night, as their students do. Teaching was definitely out, so I did something stupider. I got a job in a daycare/child development center.

 

Maybe I did it to test the theory of how much I liked children. It would have been the perfect way to get them out of my system. A kid or two in a home setting is a lot different from 15 of them holding onto a rope as you walk them to the playground.

 

It didn’t take long for me to realize that the baby room wasn’t working out for me, and getting all those little hands washed and sanitized before snack time, drove me out of my mind. I imagined what Spike would say and the look on his face if he saw what I was up to, and decided to get over myself really quickly and out of the daycare.

 

Next, I got a job as a dental receptionist trainee. That is NOT an easy job. My hats off to all receptionists in any type of medical office. Learning the scheduling software while being interrupted every 93 seconds by the phone or a patient was a cinch, compared to navigating insurance coding and billing.

 

Living in LA for school had been fine, but it’s not where I wanted to end up. My mom had always taught my sister and me not to go where we didn’t want to be. Having grown up in the city, I decided I wanted to be someplace where my kids could run in the sprinkler in the yard and ride their bikes on the sidewalk.

 

Moving back in with my mother, and yes, I admit I thought about it, wasn’t an option. She had a steady boyfriend by then. They didn’t live together officially, but they seemed to spend about equal time staying at each other’s houses. She needed privacy, and I needed to prove that I could do something entirely on my own.

 

Still, I did like the idea of living closer to her than LA. I rented an apartment in Cedar City, about 30 minutes from Collinsville, and took a job as a receptionist for a lawyer’s office. I hated it. It had nearly as much headbanging as the dental receptionist job, without the fun coworkers and matching seasonal scrubs. I had to dress up, wasn’t allowed to giggle, and never got to take anyone to the prize box for being brave in the chair. Boring, boring, boring.

 

Meanwhile, I decided to join a church. Buffy is a people person. I was new to the area and I seriously needed to meet some nice people. One of the nice people at church knew about a nice job at a nice automobile dealership. I was sort of a receptionist, but there were lots of other duties and I really loved it. I met a ton of people. Most of the guys who worked there were great. The men who delivered parts for the shop were always flirting and bringing in gossip. Our two female dealers were mentors for me and I felt like I’d found a niche.

 

I did feel, with my degree, I should be “doing something more”, and my mom thought I had sort of lost my mind. Buffy the Slayer, was going to church, scheduling people’s car repair appointments and making copies of paperwork for financing.

 

Thing is, I was happy. I didn’t have a career, per se, or a career track job, but I had my feet on the ground and I had friends. I went out for drinks with some of the parts guys and was regularly invited to parties. The dealership itself had a regular schedule of events for each season; picnics, amusement park day, the salt of life kind of things.

 

This is going to sound totally silly, but I adored having embroidered patches with “Buffy” on them, sewn to the pinstripe shirts I wore as part of my uniform at the dealership.

 

Interestingly, Dawn was very supportive of Buffy’s normal life. As driven as she was to have a career, she never thought I wasn’t doing enough with my life. Many people are afraid of missing out on the big things, she knew what it was like to fear missing out on the little things. She was totally on board with living vicariously through her sister.

 

Dawn wasn’t going to put her career on hold to settle down, she wasn’t going to put her body through pregnancy and childbirth, and she wasn’t giving up city life to buy a house in a small town. She was comfortable with her choice, but she realized it was a choice.

 

She also knew what it was to be driven, and she saw that I was compelled to do the things I did, the same way she was. She auditioned for shows and roles. I tried different jobs. She still thought I was somewhat provincial, but she also considered me brave. I was gung-ho when it came to trying different things, changing gears. She didn’t view what I was doing, as playing it safe.

 

Several months after I started working at the dealership, I met Mark. He was a single dad at the church I attended. I volunteered in the child care twice a month and his little boy Jackson took a liking to me. One thing followed another and we started dating.

 

I hadn’t had a steady boyfriend since I’d graduated. I kept busy enough socially. There were a lot of young people around the dealership, and I was invited to coworker’s family events as well. Very few weekends went by when I wasn’t doing something fun.

 

My mother got a little concerned when I told her that, instead of a party or evening out with friends, I had spent another weekend with Mark and Jackson going to Chuckie Cheese and kid’s movies.

 

She had met Mark and Jackson and liked them both. It may not sound like much of a recommendation, but there was nothing not to like about them. Mark was thoughtful and intelligent. He and my mother worked in similar fields and always had plenty to talk about. Jackson was a nice little boy who didn’t cry a lot or break things.

 

About three months after we had started dating, I was visiting Mom, when she suggested we play some backgammon. I knew what she was going to say. “Buffy, do you know what you’re doing?”

 

At least she had the decency not to begin the conversation with “Mark is a very nice man, but….” Still, my mother doesn’t beat around the bush, and there was no way to discuss Buffy’s relationships and dating life, without discussing Spike.

 

“I remember when you walked in that door that night, and I asked you who Mr. Bell was. Do you know what you told me?” she said, as she set up the board.

 

I felt flush. “I said he was the one.”

 

She met my eye.

 

“But I didn’t mean he was the one, as in THE one, I meant he was the one who I’d told you about before. You’re not trying to compare Mark to Spike are you?”

 

That was not only absurd, it was unfair. I hadn’t seen Spike in years. He was still listed as “unavailable”, and in my mind, my affair with him was listed under “folly of youth”. I didn’t discount it as meaningless and I never considered it a mistake, but it was in the past. Even had I wanted it to be something other than the past, it was in the past. The statute of limitations was running out.

 

“You never compare them?” She rattled the dice in their leather-covered cup.

 

“No, I really don’t. Spike is a vampire who crawled into my window when I was 17 to have animal sex with me. So no, I don’t compare him to an actual man, with a job and a son who treats me…”

 

I didn’t have anywhere to go with that. Mark treated me very well, but in his own way, Spike had treated me with at least as much consideration and quite a bit more passion.

 

“Besides, you never trusted Spike.” I threw my dice harder than I needed to.

 

“I’m going about this the wrong way,” she said, frowning at the board. I wasn’t sure if she was talking about her strategy for the game or her discussion with me.

 

“I’m not talking about comparing the two men. Mark is obviously the better man. I’m just thinking about what you want for yourself overall. Maybe Spike was your bad boy phase…maybe Mark is your good boy phase,” she suggested.

 

Maybe. But at some point, I had to give up the convenient “It’s a phase” thing and do something with my life. It disturbed me that she thought of Mark more as a “type” than a person. She didn’t know him very well, but he was in no way insipid or generic.

 

“Have you and Mark discussed marriage?”

 

“In a hypothetical way. We want to know if we are on the same page about marriage in general before we talk about OUR marriage.”

 

My mother wasn’t aware of the sex issue, which was, if not an elephant in the room, at least a medium sized pony.

 

We met at church and people at church knew we were dating. While neither of us was the “sex outside of marriage means eternal condemnation” type, our relationship was incubating in an atmosphere where casual sex was frowned upon. At some point, we were going to have to decide what to do about it.

 

Our current way of dealing with it was to not do anything hot and heavy. Kisses were chaste. Mark did put his arm around me, and we held hands, but by mutual consent, we went no further.

 

I admit I was getting extremely frustrated, not at him, not even at the situation, just plain sexually frustrated. I never could touch myself, without thinking about Spike. It was a habit I had never tried to overcome. When I was alone, I let myself sink into fantasies and memories of our time together.

 

Spike got me off--a lot. The more frustrated I got over having a boyfriend, who was only half a boyfriend, the more I thought about Spike. By the time my mom suggested we play backgammon, Spike was on my mind on nearly a daily basis.

 

I had decided that I wasn’t going to wait till marriage with Mark. If that was his plan, it wasn’t happening. I wasn’t signing on to a life with someone if I didn’t know if they could do it for me in the sack.

 

“Will you be disappointed in me if I marry Mark?” May as well get it out there. Her look told me a lot. It wasn’t exactly disappointment I saw there, but it was certainly a concerned disquiet.

 

“What do you want from me? What do you want FOR me?” I tossed the damned dice cup away. I had a nice guy, a job I liked, and I was a well-adjusted former Slayer.

 

Mom sat back and rubbed her temple with one hand. “You know, I don’t even know. I’m jaded on the idea of marriage, but you already know that. What about your church…you’re very involved.”

 

I was. I attended service weekly and volunteered for events. I liked being part of something positive. It was healing.

 

“Do you believe in all that?” It was the first time she’d asked me outright.

 

“No.” I had never kidded myself. I liked the people and the positive things the church did and accomplished. I valued its role in my life, but I didn’t believe in any literal way.

 

“Does Mark?”

 

“No, but, not in the same way I don’t.” That sounded weird. Can you disbelieve in more than one way? “He believes in God, and he believes in the way of life and that it’s good for Jackson, but if you want to know if he’s accepted Jesus as his personal savior, no.”

 

“Does Mark know about your past?”

 

“No.” There is no way to explain the Slayer gig to someone who hasn’t been around to see it. I mean this. There is no way. Matt, Kelly’s husband, worked for the Council, that was how they met. He understood. Mark would never, and could never, understand.

 

“That’s a huge part of your life.”

 

“I don’t want it to always be the thing I have to work around. I’m out. I made it. What’s the point of making it out if you can’t LIVE out?” Even though I made a point of not bringing it up, it kept coming up. Now the subject of not bringing it up kept coming up.

 

My mother leveled with me. “I don’t think that you can live out. I can’t. And your scars? Has Mark asked about them?”

 

No, because he hadn’t seen them.

 

“I don’t want to marry someone from the Council. Do I have to go move to England so I have a dating pool of people who “get it”? Do you want me to live as a Watcher’s wife, and be married to someone who’s taken sacred vows?

“It’s like everything I’ve done, school, my jobs…would have been for nothing. I’ll just be sucked back in.”

 

“You can’t use Mark as an escape vessel.”

 

“I’m not USING Mark for anything. I love him, he loves me…We’re building something. I want to have a baby. I want to have a house.” It felt good to say those things out loud to my mother.

 

“I don’t want you to have to live a life where you hide who you are, and you ARE a Slayer, that doesn’t go away. I haven’t been able to make it go away,” she admitted.

 

“You’re beautiful Buffy and you deserve everything you want. But you also deserve someone who can take everything you have to give.”

 

“This is it. This is who I am, and what I have to give. And it’s just as much the result of being the Slayer as anything else I’ve done. I’m not running from it. Why do you think I’m trying to escape? Don’t I seem happy?”

 

“You always seem happy with whatever you’re doing, but you also always want more. You’re always searching. You’re never satisfied, and that’s OK, but it’s hard on a spouse. No one wants to feel like they’re not enough. Like they can’t provide.”

 

“Is that how I made you feel?”

 

“That’s how all kids make their parents feel, but that’s a good thing. You grow up and leave, chasing after your dreams. But I went through it with your father. It’s hard when your life partner tells you that you’re not what they want, and you never will be. And there’s nothing you can do can fix it, because it’s not your fault, to begin with.”

 

“You don’t want me to get married.”

 

“I don’t want you to feel trapped.”

 

“I hear what you’re saying, I do. But I don’t want to keep doing this. Dating, changing partners. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of asking myself if I can do “better” and knowing they’re asking themselves the same question. Mom, I’m tired.”

 

I don’t think that it was just because I worked at a dealership that the dating scene felt way too much like car shopping. I sometimes wondered if people even fell in love anymore, or did they just realize they wanted a mate and went looking for something in their price range with the features they were hoping for, and an attractive package of extras.

 

Mark wasn’t like that. Mark loved me, and our lives worked. They fit together. Turns out that wasn’t all that fit together.

 

Talk about marriage became more than hypothetical. Mark and I started getting specific. We talked about what kind of house we wanted, and did we want more kids. We also moved things into the bedroom.

 

There’s sexual chemistry and there’s sexual physics. When you meet a person who turns you on just by walking into a room, that’s chemistry. If that same person can also put tab A into slot B in a mindblowing way, that’s physics.You can have a partner that just doesn’t fit right.

 

Mark and I fit. We fit so right, that I got off just having intercourse with him, almost every time. That was a really nice discovery.

 

One thing I hadn’t liked so much about dating in college, was how to handle the fact that I didn’t get off from intercourse most of the time. My partner and I would have to dance around the issue of what it would take to get me off, and how important it was or wasn’t.

 

I’m not a shrinking violet when it comes to talking about sex, but some of these guys weren’t going to be around long enough to give them the Buffy Orgasms 101 course. I felt really weird just rubbing myself on them, like some kind of dildo, while I was imagining Spike.

 

When I had to work hard to get off, you can bet I was imagining Spike. I was also imagining how fucking smug he would look if he knew that. Sometimes, I imagined him watching and that was sort of a kinky turn on.

 

At first, I worried that I might call out his name when I was getting close, then I realized that if I DID yell “SPIKE” at a climactic moment, my partner wouldn’t know I was talking about another man. It could just be my quirky name for an orgasm right? Hey, I’m about to Spike!

 

Anyway, back to Mark and I in the bedroom. I didn’t have to work hard to get off. He didn’t have to work hard to get me off. If we wanted to be creative, we could, but we didn’t have to, which meant I wouldn’t have to imagine my former vampire lover, getting all hot and bothered, while I humped my husband. Tell me how that can’t be a good thing.

 

I made a point, as our relationship progressed, to spend time with my mother, so she could see that Mark and I were partners in real life. There was nothing supernatural or threatening about it. My past as the Slayer didn’t even play into it.

 

I wanted her to see how happy and calm I was, and though she didn’t know it, a lot of that had to do with how things were working out in the bedroom. She seemed genuinely happy for me when we announced our engagement.

 

Dawn was puzzled by my choice of husband, but she liked him. Her comment to me, after meeting Mark was, “He’s not as hot as most of your boyfriends.”

 

Mark was handsome, with a dose of sexy, when he’d give that sidewise look of his (or when he had a tan), but he wasn’t hot hot. The first thing you thought of when you saw him wasn’t that he’d be a firecracker in bed, it was more like, he’s still going to be a very nice looking man when he’s 60.

 

We went house hunting prior to the wedding, keeping school districts and neighborhoods in mind. The guys at work threw a wedding shower for me and made much of boo hoo hooing that Buffy the Busty and Beautiful was going to be off the market, even though I already had been for a year that I was dating Mark.

 

Jackson got fitted for a little tux, and Dawn chose a dress to wear as maid of honor. Wendy and Giles, with Olivia and toddler in tow, flew in. Xander and his wife came. My mom and her boyfriend and my dad and his wife and everyone that mattered from my life and church were there.

 

We stood in front of God and the congregation and said our I do’s, and I was really happy. We went on our honeymoon to Vancouver and took an amazing train trip through British Columbia. 5 months later I was pregnant.

 

One weekend we took Jackson to the animal shelter and he chose a puppy, who he promptly named Michaelangelo after a Teenage Mutant NinjaTurtle. We called him Mica.

 

Mark’s family were a little chilly to me at first. Honestly, I think they felt like I had too little background. There were holes in my story as far as they were concerned. Everyone had known Mark’s first wife since she was a kid, and they knew her relations. I was an outsider, with what seemed an odd past.

 

Once I was pregnant, they warmed up to me a great deal. Everyone thought it would be great for Jackson to have a little brother or sister and they were thrilled to see Mark settled and happy.

 

They had been afraid that after his divorce, he would become one of those men who became a serial dater, perpetual bachelor and a sloppy father who let another man raise his kid. Our marriage changed all that.

 

Being pregnant was the most terrifying thing I have ever done, bar none, and that’s saying something. If I had felt haunted by spirits of dead Slayers when I was at UCLA, I felt three times as haunted when I was pregnant.

 

It wasn’t just the Slayers who had never lived to reproduce, that haunted me, it was my baby. I felt an overwhelming sense of presence from my own little girl. (there was never any doubt in my mind that the baby was a girl) I felt fiercely protective of her, fiercely in love and fiercely like I wanted to share every detail of having been a Slayer with her.

 

Maybe it’s some crazy mother/daughter thing, but I knew that there was no way I was going to ever keep any part of myself a secret from that baby. I started telling her stories in the womb.

 

I would tell my unborn daughter, long tales of Slayage while I was caught in traffic. I didn’t go into grisly detail, it was more like I was sharing the epic story, a grand adventure of wonders and worlds other people only read about. I was pretty sure it wasn’t healthy for my marriage, and I wasn’t sure it was great for the baby, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.

 

I called Kelly and told her how I felt, and she said she had felt exactly the same with both her kids, but far more so with Ellie, her daughter. There was a powerful urge to pass some of it on.

 

I told my mom as well.

 

“You’ve learned how to address your past with others. I’m sure you’ll do fine.” I could tell from her tone that she didn’t believe a word she said.

 

I asked Mom to level with me, and she did. She said she hadn’t ever been confident that I would be able to cover my tracks with Mark, let alone with my own children.

 

“People hide things from their kids all the time. Sickness, affairs, the fact that the dog didn’t go to a farm where he’ll have lots of room to run.” I was thinking out loud. “Why is this different?”

 

“Because, Buffy, it’s not something you did, it’s who you are. Your children won’t settle for anything less than who you really are. A spouse can, but a child--they will work and work at you until they have worn you down to the bone. They’ll find out things about you, that you didn’t know about yourself.”

 

Might this be the time to say, “Why didn’t you tell me?” (not that she hadn’t tried...sigh)

 

My mother was thrilled at the prospect of being a grandma. She saw Jackson fairly regularly, but they never actually felt like family to each other. There was a wall of stiff formality.

 

Dawn was over the moon about the baby and becoming the world’s best aunt ever.

 

As happy as I was at the prospect of a baby, I began to have panic attacks while I was pregnant. That completely threw me for a loop. Even in the midst of Slayerage I had rarely panicked. I’d stopped seeing my Council therapist a few years earlier. Now I needed to see someone who had a clue about what might be happening with me. Talking with Kelly was great, but she wasn’t a professional.

 

Mark was fully supportive of me getting help, but it was a little weird to explain why I had a free therapist. I borrowed from the backstory of the horrible car crash where I so badly injured my leg and said I had anxiety over something happening to the baby.

 

That was partly true, but my anxiety for the baby was less that something awful would happen to her, and more that she would find out something awful about her mother.

 

Three days before my first therapy session, I got the news that Ceena had been killed in the line of duty.

 

Mark simply couldn’t understand why I needed to attend the funeral, and I had no convincing explanation. As far as he knew, she was just a girl I had met once, who had died in a tragic accident.

 

“She was so young.” I wept. Young people die every day in pointless tragic accidents and while it was very sad, traveling in the late stages of my pregnancy seemed reckless to him.

 

He was further disturbed when I announced that I was driving alone, across the country, to attend the funeral. The Dr had told us, at our last appointment, that I shouldn’t fly. I simply would not be talked out of it.

 

“Is this because of your accident?” Of course, he thought that. I blamed so many things on “the accident” that it was the default explanation for all things freaky about Buffy.

 

This time it wasn’t entirely untrue. My string of Slayer related accidents made me feel desperate to be at the funeral, to be part of an experience that could so easily have been mine.

 

Unable to talk sense into me, Mark turned to my mother for help. If anyone could reason with me it was her, and reason is what she tried to do.

 

“Don’t you think that being there will be a bit like rubbing it in her mother’s face? You made it and are here having a baby, while she’s burying her daughter?”

 

I had thought of that, and the fact that my mother was saying it held a lot of weight. My mother believed that was how SHE would have felt, had the tables been turned, but my thinking had come round.

 

“It’s like when a soldier is killed, or a firefighter. All the others from miles around attend the funeral to honor their fallen colleague. It’s out of respect for what she did,” I argued.

 

“I’m sure members of the Council will be there.” That went without saying. If nothing else, they would be there for damage control.

 

“Mom, it’s not the same.”

 

I truly did want to honor Ceena’s mission, but my reasons were selfish as well. My debriefing interviews with the Council had been healing. I let things go, and many things fell into perspective. I hoped that would happen again. I didn’t want to keep living with this terror and anxiety over unfinished business.

 

I HAD died in the line of duty, but they’d been able to bring me back and put me together again. There was no one to do that for Ceena.

 

There had been days in life when I wish I hadn’t been brought back. There were more days when I wondered why I had brought back. Was there some greater purpose or was it luck of the draw? There were SO many days that I was thrilled to be back, and that I was here and about to have a baby.

 

Finally, my mother agreed to go with me. She saw that I was determined and that barring actually chaining me to the bed, or taking the car keys away, I was going to go.

 

It was a long trip, over 2000 miles. Generally, we wouldn’t have been able to make it in time for the funeral, but given that this was a Slayer funeral, it was delayed several days for investigation and for Council members to gather.

 

That was just for preliminary investigation. Ceena’s body would be taken to Council laboratories for more thorough screening and eventually, her remains would be returned to the family. If there was any graveside service or burial at this time, it wasn’t Ceena that would be going into the ground.

 

It was a further indignity that even in death, the Slayer had one last duty to perform. It hadn’t always been that way, of course, but this was a situation where modern technology reared its impassive head.

 

Mark was surprised, and disappointed, that my mother hadn’t been able to talk sense into me and was now making a case for why I should attend the funeral after all.

 

She promised that she would take care of me, and set ground rules. I had to get out of the car and walk 15 minutes for every 200 miles, and I would only be allowed to snack on fruit and healthy food. Mark’s ground rule was that I call three times a day to check in.

 

I didn’t want to do that. I just wanted to leave him and our life behind. I wanted to be back in Slayer mode, and be with my mother and baby, three generations of Summer’s women on a sacred road trip.

 

Far from feeling resentful of our presence, Ceena’s mother was touched beyond anything we could have imagined. She was especially grateful that my mother had come. She held my mother’s hand as she wept through the service, and spoke to her for hours recounting tales of Ceena’s mission and what it was like to be a mother through all of that. 

 

They laughed and cried together, and the trip was far more healing and powerful for my mother than it was for me. My mother felt like something had come full circle in her. She felt honored and humbled to have been able to share her experience in a meaningful and powerful way like she never had before.

 

Mom had always been on the sidelines alone, often feeling helpless. Now there was someone who understood and likewise needed to be understood.

 

I didn’t receive the healing I had gone looking for. My anxiety wasn’t reduced one bit, nor was my overwhelming need to be connected to my Slayer self. I had hoped I could bury that with Ceena, that I would see that all things Slayer had been passed on and put to rest for me. It’s over Buffy. It’s over. But it wasn’t.

 

I couldn’t stand to talk to Mark and tried to get my mother to make the phone calls. I didn’t want him to hear, in my voice, that the trip hadn’t worked, that it had been for nothing, as far as I was concerned.

 

That wasn’t really true. I did need to go. I needed to hear the stories and acknowledge that even though Ceena died, she hadn’t died in vain. She had accomplished important things during her tenure. There were consequences as the result of service, and mine were less than hers. I needed to remember that.

 

My mother coached me as we drove West. She said that Mark was feeling much like she had during my time as Slayer. Sidelined, concerned and confused. Yes, it was me carrying the baby, but it was his baby too, and I owed him more consideration than I was giving him.

 

Self-absorbed Buffy reared her head again. I couldn’t even throw my handy, “You don’t understand, you just don’t understand.” at her, because she did. I was the one who had no conception of what it was like to be sidelined.

 

Knowing she was right, irritated me. Now I had to feel guilty on top of anxious, weepy and resentful. I just wanted to be alone with my baby, not dealing with all the greedy nitwits around me who thought I owed them something, and who wanted to be a part of this great work I was doing.

 

The way I saw it, Mark had nothing to complain about. After all, I had worked through to the end of my 8th month, hadn’t gotten monstrously fat, my boobs had grown two sizes and pregnancy had made my sex drive go through the roof. If he had to deal with some erratic behavior from me, he was more than recompensed for it.

 

Smile Buffy, and pretend you give a shit.

 

Dawn flew in for the baby shower. I was overjoyed to see her, and she was overjoyed that she wasn’t the one having a baby. The shower was a strange event. Everyone was weirdly polite and concerned. It’s hard to get excited when you unwrap a gift and it’s burp cloths. It’s equally hard to get excited when you open a gift and it’s a totally gag-worthy frilly outfit, that you know you are going to have to dress your baby in because it came from a woman at the church who just can’t wait to see the little darling wearing it.

 

I don’t know why all their support felt invasive. I needed it. I needed the burp cloths, and I needed them telling me how great motherhood was going to be, but I wanted to shove them away. Luckily, people are tolerant of pregnant women and their moods.

 

My dreams grew more intense and frequent as the due date drew near. I would wake, sitting straight up in bed gasping, having dreamt of being at the bottom of the ocean and knowing I needed to get to the surface so my baby could breathe. I was trying to swim, dragging her behind me, knowing that if I went too fast we’d die of the bends and if I went too slow we would drown.

 

I dreamt I was phase shifting and got out of synch with the baby. I was flickering through time signatures trying to grab her at the few points that we overlapped, only to watch her disappear and have to wait to see her all over again.

 

No number of therapy sessions helped with the nightmares. Nothing erased the terror. Nothing addressed the guilt of having survived Slayerhood, and the dread that in return I would have to give up something that meant more than life itself.


	24. The One Where I Have a Baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Motherhood leads to many changes, expected and unexpected in Buffy's life and relationships.

The One Where I Have a Baby

 

The labor and birth were absolutely normal and uneventful. I wanted my mother in the room when Becky was born. Mark’s first wife hadn’t been that close to her mother, and he was a bit surprised that it was Mom holding my hand as I pushed my little girl out, while Mark stood waiting beside my head.

 

My relationship with Mom lost a lot of the strain that had built up during the pregnancy. I had grown prickly with her, I felt I was being watched and judged. I knew she was uncomfortable with me not having spoken to Mark about having been the Slayer. On top of everything, It put her and Dawn into the place of having to keep the secret.

 

Even though we didn’t have to do much actively to keep it a secret, there was the passive pressure of not mentioning things that were in any way Slayer related. It was like the holes in Swiss Cheese, they identify it as much as the solid parts do. I had holes in my story, that could have helped explain who I was.

 

At this stage, my mother wasn’t sure that telling Mark was a reasonable option. Now our disagreements were more about the manner in which I chose to keep the secret.

 

Being a new mom was hard. There weren’t many sleepless nights, but interrupted sleep is just as bad. Mark didn’t like me bringing Becky into bed with us. When she woke up in the night, I would nurse her back to sleep, but then he wanted her to go back to her crib. This irritated me, not only because it meant neither baby or I slept well, but it went against the mama bear instinct in me.

 

She was MY baby and I knew what she needed. What she needed was to sleep next to her mama and a mama who was actually getting some REM sleep each night.

 

Mark’s mother adamantly advised against letting the baby sleep with us, and against total breast feeding. She said the baby would get spoiled and would never be able to sleep alone. She insisted that it was better if Becky bottle fed at least once a day, so we could leave her with a sitter…like Mark’s mom, for instance.

 

I didn’t give a cold shit that my mother in law meant well. She didn’t know the first thing about MY baby or about how I was supposed to act as a mother. For Mark’s sake I didn’t scream “Back off Bitch” to her face, the way I wanted to.

 

Alice is a nice person, a good person, but she considers it her duty to continue to mother her son, by telling his wife how to treat him. I was several years younger than Mark, which made this even more of an issue. Alice referred to me as a girl. She meant it in a nice way, that I was such a young pretty thing, but I was 28 with a husband and a child and girl sounded patronizing.

 

Alice was thrilled to have a granddaughter. Becky was the first, which meant she did get seriously spoiled in the clothes department. Alice bought Becky a ridiculous number of cute, adorable, lacy, itchy, irritating, hard to take on and off, impractical pieces of clothing.

When Alice wasn’t around I didn’t use any of them. I had ordered one dozen cotton onesies in different bright colors and that is what Becky lived in, unless company came over and the company’s name was Alice, or when we took her to Church.

 

Even at one-month-old, Becky wore a dress to church. Alice would immediately take her from me (let me, dear, I’m sure you can use a break) and she would parade her around to all the oohing and ahhing church members.

 

One Sunday after Church, when Becky was about 7 weeks old, Alice announced that she and Dan (yeah, Mark had a father but he never got a word in edgewise around his wife), wanted to purchase Becky’s christening gown.

 

I swear, I do not know how the words got there but they came out of my mouth “I’m not planning to have her christened.”

 

“Honey, what?” Mark looked at me the way he had when I told him I was going to Ceena’s funeral, like I’d lost my mind, except this time I’d done it in front of his mother.

 

“We haven’t talked about it yet,” I pointed out.

 

“But surely…” Alice knew she couldn’t have heard me right.

 

“There’s no rush.” I looked from one to the other, then I picked up Becky and kissed her head. “Is there baby? You’re not going anywhere.”

 

“But of course you’re going to have her christened,” Alice went on.

 

“We’ll see.”

 

“We’ll talk to Pastor Rich and we’ll let you know.” Mark tried to make nice.

 

I didn’t mind him trying to make his mother happy, it would make the Sunday afternoon that much more pleasant, but I didn’t intend to talk to Pastor Rich anytime soon about any such christening.

 

I’ve mentioned before that I didn’t really believe the facts of what the church taught. I liked the Church and the people and all that, but I didn’t feel like I wanted to put a brand name on Becky’s head. She was an infant, I didn’t feel comfortable saying, “OK, kid, this is it” just to make my mother in law happy.

 

Mark didn’t believe the Bible as literal truth. I didn’t think that once he and I talked it out, it was going to be a problem. Becky was our little girl and I assumed we’d raise her to be a respectful curious agnostic.

 

I was honestly shocked when Mark fought me on this. His take was “what’s the harm?” We attend the church, we planned to raise Becky in the church, so what was the big about having her christened?

 

I KNEW what the big was. I knew the significance and power of rituals. It wasn’t a show. It wasn’t just something we could put on like a little lace dress, to make Mark’s mother happy and then take off later when she wasn’t around. Dedicating a baby to a cause, and making promises on her behalf, means something. It was a big deal.

 

And so began the “Christening wars”. Mark said he found my position odd. If beliefs were so serious, then why didn’t we find a church that preached what I did believe and attend there.

 

I didn’t know how to explain, that I didn’t think a church like that existed, and if it did, he probably didn’t want Becky hanging around those people. You know the sort of people I mean, the vampires and demons that I spent my misguided teen years with. 

 

“So what do you believe in?” Mark asked me one evening, while we were giving Becky a bath in the kitchen sink.

 

My response, that I believed in foot massages and pita sandwiches for dinner, wasn’t the answer he was looking for.

 

“Come on Buffy. The only reason I can see for us not getting Becky christened here is that you think we belong somewhere else. I know you don’t believe in the literal Bible, I don’t either.”

 

“She’s too little for all that. To have to deal with that.” I said, soaping up her dear little head.

 

“It’s a christening. They aren’t going to ask her to start memorizing verses right away.” He teased. “Jackson has been christened. I don’t think it’s done him any harm.”

 

Jackson was another sore spot, but I digress.

 

“That’s not what I mean, I don’t think we should dedicate her to something that we don’t really understand.” There, that should help. It put the onus on us for not being fully informed, without any suggestion that the Church didn’t know what it was talking about.

 

“Is this because you’re angry with my mom? I know she can be overbearing and she’s over excited about having a granddaughter.”

 

“No, it’s not your mom. This has nothing to do with her. I guess we should have talked about it earlier before Becky was born...” Before we got married when we were talking about having kids but never got around to the specifics of religious rituals.

 

Mark took the baby and rinsed her, while I got her adorable froggy bath towel with the googly eyes on the hood. He handed her to me, and I wrapped her wiggling arms and legs up tight.

 

“It’s too important to do if we’re not sure it’s right.”

 

Mark tried to understand me. He truly did, but here we were again on the doorstep of “I can’t explain, so you’ll have to take my word for it.”

 

“When I was younger…”

 

“Does this have to do with your accident?” Default starting point for all things pertaining to weird Buffy.

 

That excuse was starting to sound tired, even to me. It had to have been one hum-dinger of an accident to be responsible for SO many things in my past.

 

“Yeah, sort of.” I handed our precious green bundle to her daddy. “I had a lot of people praying for me (and a relic of the true cross) and some things happened. I mean, there’s a LOT of power out there Mark. Power people know nothing about and you can’t just decide who you’re going to align yourself with all willy-nilly.”

 

“That’s what Pastor Rich was talking about, choosing which side you’re going to build your life on.” Mark referred to a recent sermon.

 

Pastor Rich was a nice man, a real man of God and I mean that in all the best ways, but his sermons were pablum. They weren’t saying anything wrong or dangerous (well, not often) but they weren’t telling the story like it is. They didn’t truly address where the rubber hits the road.

 

“It’s different than most people think. It’s bigger and more real and weirder. Way weirder.” I was starting to feel frantic, the way I did when something important came up, and my self-imposed gag order made it impossible for me to explain even the little bit I did understand about things.

 

Mark got that look he got when he recognized that we’d come to the place where I started to babble and nothing made sense. He thought I did it on purpose, to get my own way. He thought that instead of crying, I babbled about my terrible accident, and the lingering trauma, and got panicky and weepy so he would back down.

 

That wasn’t why I did it, at least not at first, but learned behavior being what it is, I think it ended up that way. It had become shorthand for “don’t go there”. I didn’t want for so many important things to deteriorate into what amounted to “I don’t want to talk about it” but I truly didn’t know how to talk about it.

 

“Mark, there are powers out there, and in here. Powers everywhere,” I said as we went into the nursery to get our little darling ready for bed. (and begin our tug of war over where the baby would sleep)

 

“Powers? Would it be fair to call them God?” He was trying to work with me.

 

“Not fair or accurate.” I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain what I knew, but heck, maybe the Powers would help me out!. “They’re the Powers That Be, that’s the most common name for them.”

 

“Your sister once said something about you joining a cult in college.” Was he serious? I hope Dawn didn’t tell him the one about my vampire fuck buddy.

 

“This isn’t about a cult, and no I never joined one.” Mark knew that I had done quite a bit of religious sampling. “It’s just the way things are, the way things really are.”

 

Sometimes when I started speaking about these things my hands would shake a little bit. It wasn’t because it upset me, it was because it’s so meaningful and powerful. It’s like handling something sacred and precious. Like holding Becky herself, carefully and reverently.

 

“There are things happening all around us, all the time and most people don’t even know. Like there are battles and collaborations. Things beginning and ending--all around us, all the time.”

 

“This is really important to you.” Mark realized that this was gut level important to me and that it was connected to the crazies I went through when I was pregnant. “I know you had some kind of near-death experience.”

 

I was full on shaking now. “It’s not like people think, Mark.”

 

“Buffy, come on, let’s sit down. I feel like there’s been something you’ve been trying to tell me for a long time.”

 

All the hair stood up on my body and head. This was it. He knew there was something important and he was ready to hear it. It would explain so many things. This was also a door, that if we opened, we could never shut.

 

I sat down. Becky was sleeping, a complete innocent, in her father’s arms. Mark didn’t look concerned. He knew whatever it was, he could handle it.

 

It’s usually best to begin at the beginning. I told him when I was 15, I found out there was something special about me. My track and field coach explained to me that I had powers the other girls didn’t and that I was important in the fight against good and evil.

 

Somewhere around the part about me being told I was special and needed special training, and me trying to hide that from my mom, Mark asked me if Giles or Wes had ever “touched” me.

 

I can see why he went in that direction -- male coach tells a girl she’s special, has her stay alone with him for secret training, said girl ends up with all kinds of weird paranoias and anxieties that worsen when she finds out she’s having a daughter of her own who might be preyed upon. Good thing I didn’t get to the part where I got to third base with a vampire when I was 16.

 

When Mark asked me, very gently and tenderly, I might add, if Giles or Wes had touched me, I realized that it was a hopeless case. I couldn’t explain this in any way that he could understand as true.

 

The explanation that he was cooking up could account for a lot of the issues. It’s not like he KNEW Giles, but I really didn’t want Mark thinking Giles molested me, or for him to think that my mother just let it all go on. Nor did it explain why I believed in the Powers That Be and didn’t want Becky to be baptized. I denied any wrongdoing on Wes and Giles part, but the suggestion of it had upset me so much that Mark thought it best to end the discussion “for now”.

 

Not long afterward, Mark called up my mother and told her that he was worried I was suffering from postpartum depression. He also told her that I had confessed some disturbing things that had happened when I was in high school with two of my coaches.

 

Oh boy.

 

He was probably onto something with the postpartum depression. I was having a hard time sorting through things, even with the bi-weekly sessions with the new therapist the Council had arranged for me.

 

The first subject I broached with the therapist, was that it was time to bring Mark up to speed. I thought she would mobilize forces and we could all sit down and sort this out, but instead she tried to talk me out of it.

 

She told me to look at it from Mark’s point of view. How could he take all that in? What would it do to the marriage? Would it accomplish what I hoped it would?

 

She suggested that I was being self-absorbed Buffy, who would be telling for my own comfort, not for the well-being of Mark and our daughter. I think that was a trick to get me keep my mouth shut.

 

My mother mostly agreed with the therapist, as far as whether or not Mark could accept the story and what his reaction would be.

 

My therapist asked, what would I do if I found out Mark was working for a foreign government and his identity was completely different and had killed a dozen people. It would throw me, but I would be likely to believe him if the story fit together. Very few things seemed outside the realm of possibility, to me.

 

Mark wasn’t a spy or a sniper. He was, who he was, the man I had met at the start. When Mark met me, I was a pretty, well adjusted, happy young woman, and now I was a neurotic new mother who was clearly losing her marbles and having serious delusions.

 

When he found out Wes had been killed in the car crash, the same Wes who he now thought had sexually abused me, he believed I was having survivor issues. Mark thought I was torn between hating Wes and feeling like he got what he deserved for what he had done to me. Mark thought maybe I had wished Wes dead, and now that he was, I felt guilty.

 

Complicated much? I turned down the offer of medication because I was breastfeeding Becky. When the therapist wouldn’t support my plan to explain everything to Mark, I quit going. Mark grew more and more worried.

 

“I know I’ve been down and some days I’m not myself, but Mark, I will get over this. It’s just that having a baby brings a lot of stuff up.”

 

He wanted to leave Becky with his mother one afternoon a week so I could have “me” time. Instead, I joined a “New Moms” group. We all had children under the age of three and got together once a week for cheese sandwiches and goldfish crackers. We talked about babies for about five minutes, then talked about anything BUT babies for the rest of the time.

 

You don’t need to be an ex-Slayer to live with pain, fear, situations and secrets. The other mothers divulged things that I never expected to hear. Drinking husbands, love affairs, foreclosed mortgages. There was even a mother who admitted to hating her baby. She was sorry she’d had a child, even though she had married a man she wasn’t in love with because she wanted a baby and thought he’d make a great father.

 

I loved Becky in a way I’d never loved anyone in my life. I couldn’t imagine hating her or resenting her, no matter what happened. I felt for the woman. She wanted to love her baby. She wanted her baby to be all the things Becky was to me, but she couldn’t feel it.

 

Everyone around me had been talking about postpartum depression and I knew from reading, that what that woman was describing, was common to it. How do you tell someone that what they are thinking and feeling might not be true at all and that it was likely the result of some wonky hormones?

 

I had it better than many of the women. Our bills were paid, I adored my child, I even liked my life. I had a ton of inner disquiet, but my dissatisfaction was with myself.

 

Alice wasn’t a terrible mother in law, she got on my nerves but she wasn’t overly invasive and she never actually put me down. I felt judged, but she’d never said an unkind word to me.

 

The mom's group didn’t make me feel any better about myself, but it did make me feel a little better about my life. I’d get over this hump. It was totally normal for women (and I’m sure men feel it too) to compare their own childhood with the one they were providing for their child and to feel a certain sense of nostalgia for their single, pre-mom years.

 

Was this nostalgia I was experiencing? I didn’t long for my Slayer days…exactly. There were some really awesome things that happened during those years. Terror, pain and danger aside, those years were the very time period that many people include in the “best years” of their lives.

 

Still, a lot of it, I wouldn’t live them over again for anything in the world…with the exception of Becky. If I had to do it again to save her. I would.

 

Though my disquiet hadn’t gone away, my panic over my feelings did abate. Mark noticed the change. Every day when he came home from work I saw the relief on his face when, after a few minutes of speaking to me, he determined I wasn’t on the edge of hysteria.

 

I still had my days, or to be honest, weeks, when I felt like nothing made sense. I’d crack an egg and forget why I had done it, there wasn’t a bowl or frying pan in sight. I’d dump it down the sink and three minutes later remember why I’d taken it out in the first place.

 

I was also having a lot of vivid dreams. In one recurring dream, I was at the bottom of the ocean and I needed to get to the surface because Becky needed her diaper changed and the dog had gotten into the trash and Mark was due home and I couldn’t surface, and things were getting more and more desperate. I’d sit straight up in bed gasping, then leap out of bed and run to the crib.

 

Sleep tousled Mark would ask if I’d had “that dream” again. I wanted so badly to tell him it wasn’t a dream, it was a memory. So I did.

 

He translated it into being something I’d experienced while under anesthesia during one of my surgeries. I thought that was pretty clever of him.

 

I read an article about memories, and how what we remember changes over time. Memories are altered a little bit every time we tell the story until we remember it as the story we told, rather than how it happened. I wondered if I could change my actual memories by explaining them to Mark within a different framework.

 

The Council created back stories that a former Slayer or Slayer’s family member could use to explain some of the weirdness. Maybe that was how they worked, if you told them long enough, to enough people, you became convinced yourself. While the idea creeped me out, it was also intriguing. Maybe I could choose to give up my past, in order to have a better future.

 

I could decide the bottom of the ocean feeling and the whole phase shift episode WAS something I experienced due to anesthesia or even a blow to the head. Over time I could replace more and more of my stories with better stories that could have happened in the world Mark lived in, the world I was trying to live in now.

 

My mother was disturbed when I told her my theory, which was quickly morphing into a plan.

 

“You want to brainwash yourself.” She used different words but basically, that was my plan.

 

“There is no reason why it can’t work. I just need to find more reasonable explanations. It’s hard enough with Mark, it will be worse with Becky. You know I have to do this.”

 

“So are you planning on keeping Mark’s assumption that Wes and Giles had sex with you? He seemed to think that explained a lot.”

 

While I hated that story and had denied it, it did explain a lot, a disturbing amount actually. Mark almost had me convinced that it sort of had happened. I mean, I know they didn’t ever touch me inappropriately, but there was definitely emotional manipulation and some of the other things that go along with sexual abuse.

 

“I’m not sure about that, maybe we could just say Wes did it, you know since he’s not around anymore.” I felt like the most horrible person in the world as those words came out of my mouth. I was willing to defame an honorable man who died to save me, to make things easier with my husband. I don’t think that was the sort of thing Wes risked his life for.

 

“That car crash story, now THAT explains a ton,” I said hopefully. “Especially now that we have the anesthesia angle to play up.”

 

“If you weren’t already seeing a therapist Buffy, I’d tell you to seek professional help. In fact, I’m going to tell you anyway, you need to seek professional help.”

 

What I needed was my old therapist, the one who actually did the “off the record” thing and who gave a shit about my life. The current Council provided therapist, was too lockstep and robotic for my liking. Helen (not her real name) my old therapist, had retired from the Council. It would be horribly selfish of me to try to track her down, but it was what I really wanted to do.

 

I asked Wendy to work on it and asked that if she found Helen, to contact her and tell her that I would like to speak to her but I totally understood if she wasn’t interested.

 

I’ve never been great about boundaries. I’ve been told it’s the result of so much hand to hand combat and dimension hopping. Boundaries are meant to be violated and even the ones that seem insurmountable, are fluid at best. You can’t unknow those things.

 

I was never good at leaving well enough alone and I always assume there is a lot more going on under the surface than what we first see. I’m a suspicious person, and way too often assign negative motives to people, like my mother in law.

 

TV show Buffy has a hard time letting people in. That’s not really me. I was used to people poking around in my life. I said I hated it, I made a show of rebelling against it, but it was what I was used to. Whether I thought I liked it or not, I got used to the input and valued a lot of it. I was used to asking for help.

 

I was not and never have been, a strong independent girl like TV Buffy. That’s why I liked Spike’s take charge attitude, I believed he knew more about things than I did and I liked the way he did things. The flip side of that is his respect for my process. He was take chargey but he didn’t bulldoze over me. He rarely pressed me to do anything I didn’t want to unless it pertained to the mission.

 

I don’t let people walk all over me, but I definitely want input until I don’t. That was another thing about being the Slayer, not just “right of refusal” but Slayer instinct. I had it, they didn’t. When push came to shove I followed my instinct and that carried over in life. There were nonnegotiables, like the christening.

 

No cocked up tale of possible sexual abuse or anesthesia could explain that one away. It became a huge sticking point. It makes sense, though, if it didn’t matter I wouldn’t have been so against it and they wouldn’t have been so in favor it. It was because it DID matter that things got so heated.

 

While waiting, with crossed fingers, for Helen to contact me (I had very little concern that she would leave me hanging) I had to think of ways to keep my head above water. I began running again and getting those endorphins flowing. I really really didn’t want to take any medication that might have an effect on Becky.

 

I read a book called “Eat Happy” and changed my diet to include their list of “happy foods” proven to combat depression. We are NOT talking comfort food here. The author tells you from page one that comfort food is a big lie. I got the feeling there was a “Diet Slayer” out there and the book was her tell all about the secret world of good and evil eating.

 

My mother was in a tough spot. She wanted to help me in any way she could, but there were things she couldn’t get on board with. Sometimes she thought I was just plain wrong. I got used to the phrase, “I can’t support that Buffy.” But she was willing to hear me out on anything.

 

She thought contacting Helen was a good idea. She thought hypnosis therapy was a bad one. She thought letting Alice watch Becky one afternoon was a good idea. She thought taking a year to go on an Aborigine Walkabout was a bad one. Hey, so sue me, I was trying to think outside of the box, and to be fair, phase shifting and altered consciousness had saved my life before.

 

“What about a pilgrimage?” I asked her “You know, like the Catholics do, walk a really long way to a shrine.”

 

“Would this be with or without Becky strapped to your back?” She was totally serious.

 

“With, I wouldn’t leave her behind.”

 

“And you think Mark is going to approve? You won’t let the baby be baptized in your own Church but you will take her on a pilgrimage to a Catholic holy site, and you’re not Catholic?”

 

“I wish Spike had let me keep that relic.”

 

My mother took Becky out of my arms and went into the kitchen to make some cocoa. She DID make cocoa but not for Spike, who wouldn’t touch the stuff. He doesn’t like chocolate of any kind. I know right? How weird is that?

 

I followed her. “So you think it’s a bad idea?”

 

“It’s not a bad idea, it’s an impractical idea. You know better than me the powers that are attached to all that woo woo and holy holy, but you also chose to live in the mundane world with a mundane husband. You can’t go whisking his child off to Mecca or Lourdes, or to have hands laid on you by a swami.”

 

She put two mugs into the microwave. I went to take the baby from her so she would have both hands to work with but she turned away from me and held Becky on her hip.

 

“I’ve done this before, I know how to do simple household chores holding a baby.” She sounded offended, which was unusual for her.

 

I hung back, watching my mom go through the ritual of making cocoa, Becky happily being bounced and jostled in the process. I imagined my mother doing that with me, and I felt like I could almost remember watching her do it with Dawn.

 

I was once just my mother’s little baby, a part of her everyday life, an ordinary life that got turned topsy-turvy when I hit 15. She never got it back, not really. She deserved some of those very mundane moments where she was just her, making cocoa for her ordinary daughter and bouncing her ordinary granddaughter on her hip.

 

I realized that I must be driving my mother crazy once again, with my Slayer related mania. It was like I couldn’t talk about anything else. Maybe THAT was the problem, I was still obsessed.

 

I made a vow, for an entire week I was not going to entertain any Slayer related thoughts, discussions, or fantasies. Nothing. Cold turkey.

 

Becky had grown out of her last round of colored rompers, so mom and I went shopping for a new set. The afternoon was all about pure cotton, pretty bright colors, a new set of pacifiers, and mom talking about Dawn and me when we were babies.

 

I needed more memories of those times. Pre-Slayer times, NORMAL times. I needed to connect Becky to those things. Mom laughed, recalling some teething biscuits that would get all soft and spitty and then get stuck in my hair like glue, nearly impossible to wash out. I told her to get me some of those biscuits. I wanted to cement the memory into my head, to own it the way my mother did.

 

The following Thursday was Alice’s first afternoon with Becky. I dressed Becky in one of the offensive lacey outfits, with matching socks and pointless patent leather baby shoes (which she kicked off immediately) and drove her to my mother in law’s.

 

I wasn’t even allowed in the house. Alice took Becky and her bag of supplies, and sent me on my way, reminding me that Mark would pick Becky up on his way home from work. For the first time since Becky’s birth, I was totally alone for 6 whole hours.

 

I felt naked and lonely. I hadn’t realized what great company a baby could be, but she really was. Becky sang all the time, she made up songs and went at it with gusto. Sometimes she’d stop for a minute, as if she was hearing something no one else could hear, then go into another verse.

 

Sometimes I would join her, though she could be sort of hard to follow. Becky liked it very much when we sang together.

 

When we weren’t singing we were talking, back and forth. Sometimes we spoke in her language, baby babble, and sometimes we spoke in English. (or I did anyway because she was still working on hers) And sometimes...I caught myself mentioning Slayer related things to her. They just popped out naturally.

 

“Becky did I ever tell you about the time?” Ooops!

 

No more. I was done. All that was distant memories, which were going to be replaced with better memories. How depressing. I was going to take what was a crazy time in my life, but also a good time, and reduce it to sexual abuse and car crashes. Screw that, if I was going to inject new memories they were going to be good ones.

 

Why not give myself a black belt in martial arts and talk about how high I could pole vault? I’d tell her about my almost boyfriend Xander, and how cute and sweet he was. Heck, let’s make him a full fledged boyfriend. I can tell her how Giles taught me basic Latin and…

 

Those thoughts lasted about as long as it took me to drive from my mother in law’s, to my empty house. Well, sort of empty house, there was the dog. I didn’t love that dog. We never clicked. We were friendly, we always acknowledged each other in passing with a tail wag and a head pat, but you know that adorable thing people do when they hug and wrestle with the dog? We didn’t have that type of relationship.

 

Empty house or not, there were definitely errands that needed to be done that were nearly impossible with a baby on board, like clothes shopping. I took myself to Target and bought some cute outfits. I picked up a few shirts for Mark and got myself a latte just like in the old days.

 

I popped my own CD into the car stereo, in place of one of the many brain stimulating Mozart and Baby Einstein CD’s we usually listened to while driving. This was “me time”. Did I mention that while shopping at Target I freaked when I turned around and the stroller wasn’t there? I went into a panic, thinking Becky had been kidnapped. Then I remembered that I hadn’t brought her with me.

 

It was all good until I checked my rearview mirror at a stop light and nearly had a heart attack because the baby seat was empty. When I got home, I put in the laundry, then went to check on her in her crib and she wasn’t there. I cried like I had lost my best friend.

 

These “me time” afternoons were going to take some getting used to. Mark stayed at his mom’s for dinner. This had been agreed upon earlier, the reasoning being that I wouldn’t have to spend a blessed second of my “me time” cooking for him, but I’m pretty sure it was because his own parents wanted some they time alone with him. Fair enough.

 

I wasn’t supposed to do housework during “me time”, another ground rule that had been established, but until I got into the swing of things I cheated. That first week I vacuumed the carpets, but while I did I sang “Me me me me me me MEEEEEE” and hoped that made up for it.

 

Alice mentioned bubble baths were supposed to be very effective for “me time”. She’d given me some yummy bubble bath as a jump starter. I KNEW she was going to ask me if I’d liked them, so I squirted a generous amount into the tub and turned on the hot water. They did smell really good, like REALLY amazingly good. Seriously, these things had to be pumped full of pheromones because they got all kinds of tingly feelings going, sort of like Mrs. Abrosia’s cat pee, except these smelled good and made me want to lick a hot guy as if he was a lollipop.

 

I took a look at the bottle to see if she’d bought these at Pandora’s Box or some other sex shop. Maybe she was worried Mark wasn’t getting any and that our sex life needed a boost. It was sort of a creepy thought, that my mother in law might be wondering what Mark and I were up to in the bedroom. NO matter how used I was to people poking in my business, that was too much nosy, even for me.

 

The bubble bath was ordinary kind, it just smelled super terrific. I’d taken a few baths since Becky was born. I would bring her in with me and we’d splash around. Mark had taken a few adorable pictures of us with all our essentials (that’s what he called the parts of your body that get covered with a bathing suit) covered by bubbles. This was the first bubble bath I’d had alone in I couldn’t even remember. I was usually efficiency girl. I took quick showers because I had places to go and people to be.

 

When I sank back into the warm water, I thought that maybe, just maybe, Alice, a mother of three, knew what she was doing after all. I believed she had our best interest at heart. She wanted me to get better. She wasn’t trying to steal and brainwash my baby and husband. Maybe this was just one caring mother to another.

 

I didn’t totally believe it, but I was willing to entertain the possibility.

 

A bubble bath is a weird thing. The principle is relaxing, but taking a bubble bath is a learned skill. You have to figure out how much bubble stuff to use, how warm to make the water, how deep to make the water, to put your hair up or leave it down, to light candles (she had given me some of those too) to play music or not. I had to figure out what worked for me. It sort of felt like too much trouble, and I decided that maybe I’d focus on one element at a time.

 

That first bath, I didn’t bother with any nonessentials. I put up my hair and passed on the candles and music. (no glass of wine or bowl of peeled grapes either) It felt good, and that smell…OK, it wasn’t the smell that did it, it was the feeling the smell aroused in me. It didn’t exactly make me horny, it made me feel a bit tingly, and a lot playful.

 

Here’s a secret, pregnancy and birth do things to your body, like your boobs get bigger and you get stretch marks and for some reason (the Dr told me that this was likely to change when my body went back to it’s pre-pregnancy condition) Mark and I didn’t quite fit each other the way we used to. I used to get off most of the time when we had sex. Now I didn’t. Now it took special attention, which required time and energy that we didn’t often have.

 

We went from having a LOT of very good sex during my pregnancy, to having not so much, and less satisfying (at least for me) sex, after Becky was born. It affected Mark too. He loved that I got off during intercourse and he missed it. I think he felt guilty that I didn’t get mine as often as I used to, even though it wasn’t really his fault.

 

At mom’s group, the subject of sex came up a lot, so did the subject of bodies being different than they were pre-baby. Some women found it easier to get off. Some lost pretty much all their sex drive. Some found they felt guilty during or after sex as if their bodies belonged to the baby now and they felt like they were betraying the baby when they used it for pleasure. Some resented their partners or were afraid to have sex because they were terrified of getting pregnant again.

 

I fell into several of those categories at one time or another. I belonged to another common category as well, the women who found it easier, and more convenient, to take care of business themselves when they had a chance. That way, if things didn’t work out with hubby/partner, it was no biggie. Streamline it the way you learn to streamline so many things after you have children.

 

“Get yourself a toy, and when the baby’s napping, have a ball,” one of the moms told me. “Think of it like this, happy mommy makes for happy hubby and happy baby.”

 

That particular mom was always so practical and grounded. I had found her advice really sensible and useful many times, so hey, she was probably right about this too.

 

Bubble bath, “me time”…yeah, I went there. I thought about him because it was the surest and best way to get off. I had trained myself. I had a set of fantasies to choose from, I could always find one to fit my mood. When I thought of him, sometimes I dug my fingernails into the skin of my shoulder as hard as I could. It wasn’t the same as him biting me, but if I did it at JUST the right moment, it made things that much better.

 

TMI? Sorry. Here’s the thing. His words from 9 years earlier were still true, I would think of him every time I touched myself. In spite of my promise to banish all things Slayer related from my life, and I meant it, it seemed that “me time” should be the one time I could think Slayer thoughts, which included vampires, and the only vampire I really wanted to think about was him.

 

I got to really liking this “me time”. Mark noticed that I seemed much calmer and relaxed on the evenings after “me time”. My wardrobe certainly improved. Alice was touched and pleased that I liked the bubble bath liquid so much.

 

I tried using the similarly scented candles when I was alone with Mark, to put me in the mood. They helped, but they also got my mind wandering. I was setting up a very dangerous precedent. Part of me knew this was wrong, but on the other hand, someone had listed themselves as unavailable for over 6 years, so how much harm could a few fantasies do? At this point, it was like imagining doing it with a rock star or movie star. Whatever got the job done, right?

 

Helen did contact me. She was happy to catch up and hear about my life. She said it sounded like I was transitioning beautifully, and I felt pretty awful having to tell her that it wasn’t going quite as well as we’d hoped.

 

“I know it’s wrong of me to even think of asking--” I’m sure she could hear the tears in my voice. “But things have been really hard for me since the baby.”

 

“Buffy, you know I don’t work with the Council anymore.”

 

“Yes. I didn’t know if you’d retired from private practice too…”

 

“I still take an occasional client.”

 

“I can pay, God at this point I think Mark would pay just about anything.”

 

“Buffy, I’m trying to put those years behind me as well. I know it isn’t easy. It hasn’t been for me-“

 

“Maybe this would help both of us,” I said quickly.

 

Silence.

 

“I’ll have to think about it.”

 

“Helen, I wouldn’t ask this if I knew what else to do. But I’ve tried everything. Sometimes I feel like I’m losing my mind, and I’m afraid I might be losing my marriage.”

 

That was the first time I’d said it out loud. Not the first time I’d thought it or feared it, but the first time I’d said it. On the surface, things had been getting better. The house was clean. I had clothes that fit me again. Becky was thriving, and I didn’t cry all the time. I had made real friends in my mom’s group, and I was talking about things that were not Slayer related with my own mother.

 

But inside of me, there was a heavy stone. It rose and fell, but it was always there. Sometimes it made my feet feel heavy and I could barely get the house cleaned and meals cooked. Other times it lay in the pit of my stomach. Some days it lodged in my heart and I felt like I couldn’t love anyone or anything. Other days it caught in my throat and I had to watch my tongue so it didn’t say anything acid or cruel. There were days where it filled my head, with throbbing pressure. I just couldn’t make that stupid stone go away.

 

The baptism issue grew beyond Becky. Having been forced to think about it over and over, I decided I couldn’t go to church anymore. Where I used to be able to find comfort and community I could only find discord. My resentment was causing me to pick apart every teaching and sermon. I heard a voice saying “you don’t really believe this. Is this what you want Becky to grow up believing? Why are you here? What are you trying to prove? Who are you trying to kid?”

 

This upset Mark in a huge way. I was shocked at how adamant he was that we attend church as a family. Whether we believed it all literally was beside the point, as far as he was concerned. It was where we met, it was what we did and who we were as a family.

 

Now I understand. Attending church together was a symbol of our united front. When I refused, it was a sign that “we” were deteriorating.

 

“You can’t do this one thing for me, Buffy? I know this has all been terribly hard on you, but it’s not been easy for me either. This is one thing, a small thing. Even if you’re not feeling it right now, just keep with it, it will come back. Everything will come back. It’s been getting better.”

 

Acting “as if” is a useful strategy for a lot of things. It gets things done even when we’d rather not do them. It helps us get back into the swing of things when we’ve fallen out of step. He was right, it was one small thing. A few hours a week. A few painless hours. Dress up, dress Becky up, sing some songs, listen to the sermon, see friends, go to his mom’s for lunch. What was so hard in that?

 

I felt like I couldn’t make myself go. I had a violent reaction to the idea of sitting there pretending everything was alright, and that any of the motions I was going through meant anything. I hated smiling at people when they asked if we were going to have a christening and if we’d chosen godparents. I felt like I was being stuck with needles and I didn’t know why.

 

Helen called back and said, yes, we could talk, off the record and for no charge. She had thought it over and thought that maybe it would help her.

 

“I don’t know why I can’t do this. Mark’s right, it’s a small thing.” I told her, during one of our phone calls.

 

“Clearly it’s not.”

 

“But it should be. I want it to be.”

 

“It’s not a small thing to either of you, if it was so inconsequential to Mark, he wouldn’t be making an issue of it. Going to church as a family is an indicator of something to him, just as it is to you.”

 

“He doesn’t want anyone to know there’s a crack in the foundation.”

 

“Every foundation has cracks, they’re not insurmountable. Mark has things he doesn’t tell you.”

 

I knew that was true, and took heart in it. Just like people in the world don’t need to know many of the things I know. Some of Mark’s well-kept secrets, I was sure, provided me with blissful ignorance.

 

Some people are all about full disclosure, I had learned not to be one of them.

 

Helen talked to me about her own attempts at leaving the Council and the ways they’d managed to talk her into staying. She wanted to get on with life. She wanted things to be less intense. Bad and good should refer to what’s on TV rather than what is trying to crawl through a dimensional portal.

 

What she did, that she found most helpful, was similar to what I had done. She found a group of retired women who talked about making their own transition. Like me with the mom's group, she found out that her issues were normal, and not invariably tied to her work with the Council.

 

She and I both had more in common with everyday people, than we had different.

 

We had to get over ourselves and the first step was trusting that we would. Maybe we’d been trying too hard. The more you tell yourself you are different, and that no one can understand, the truer it becomes. It’s like those memories, we have to be mindful of what we are reinforcing.

 

I was going to embrace the fact that 95% of my life and my reactions, were the same as other new mothers and wives in growing families. I also needed to embrace that there was 5% that was different, and that was fine too.

 

I flat out told Mark I wasn’t going to attend church and I didn’t want Becky there either. He said he accepted that I wouldn’t attend (I know he believed I’d get over it and that it was lingering postpartum depression) but he insisted that Becky WAS going to attend. He hoped I would reconsider because it was going to look very bad and people, including his family, would think that our marriage was failing.

 

He was right. That was inevitable. That. Was. Inevitable. It’s like I was making it public, even before I wanted to admit it to myself.

 

Alice was furious. In spite of all Mark had done for me, and all she had done for me, I was being stubborn, rebellious and ungrateful. She wasn’t really wrong.

 

Off Mark went to Church, with Jackson and Becky. I haven’t spoken much about Jackson, mostly out of respect for privacy for him and his mom, but Jackson was one of the issues as well.

 

During my depression, I found it harder and harder to deal with having him around and taking care of him. Sometimes, when Jackson came to stay, I spent weekends with my mother. She had a serious boyfriend so that inconvenienced her as well. Other times, Mark would have to spend time with Jackson away from home and either bring him back to his mother at night or have him at our house while Becky and I hung out in the bedroom or nursery.

 

I was a horrible stepmom after Becky was born. I resented Jackson where I hadn’t before. I went from enjoying spending time with him to finding it difficult to be civil and keep my temper. I’m not going to try to blame any of that on Slaying. It was another manifestation of my self-absorption and my desire to have my husband put all his time and energy into our marriage and our child.

 

My behavior, as reprehensible as it was, isn’t all that uncommon. According to other stepmothers in the mom's group, it’s one of the challenges of step and mixed families. Because it had all felt so right when we were dating and when we were first married, I hadn’t anticipated this at all. I was feeling crazy primal rage and resentment. It was insane and no matter how I tried to act differently and tell myself I MUST act differently, and that I was being an unreasonable child, I felt like I couldn’t help it.

 

That is without a doubt, one of the most shameful failings in my life, that I couldn’t give a little boy what he needed and that I resented his father for trying to do just that. Like the Church attendance issue, for some reason, I couldn’t push past it.

 

When Becky was a year old, Mark insisted that I take medication for depression, by that time we were in family/couples therapy. That made three therapists, the Council appointed one I had begun meeting with again. Helen, and now a marriage counselor.

 

Do you know what’s not easy? Having three therapists and a mother in law who tells your husband to get your child christened because it’s going to have to happen anyway and you shouldn’t hold off because your wife is mentally unstable.

 

Do you know what’s not easy, but is a blessing all the same? Having a mother who has every right to say “I told you so”, but instead tells me that I should find a good custody lawyer now because Mark WOULD use my mental state to try to take Becky away from me.


	25. The One Where You Hate Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life and love lead Buffy to make some painful choices. An old friend shows up.

The One Where You Hate Me

 

I took my mother’s advice and found a lawyer. I hired one in Collinsville, so there was little chance of Mark finding out until I was ready to take the next step. It felt dishonest and sneaky but my mother had a point. I needed to build my case NOW, so when the shit hit the fan I had a raincoat on.

 

I wasn’t working at the time, and my mom wasn’t rolling in dough. Using Mark’s money to bring a case against him seemed like a jerk move.

 

Interestingly, my dad said he would help. My dad was never the crappy, missing in action father that Buffy had on the show.

 

He wasn’t super involved in my life when I was a teen, and he hadn’t known about the Slaying. He knew I was having a rough adolescence and getting into trouble, but he thought that was the result of my parent’s break up, not that I was an undercover superhero. He always paid his child support and he made decent money so it was a substantial help to my mother.

 

Obviously, he saw Dawn tons more than me, but after the first few post-divorce years, when I was sort of surly with him, we were on good terms. I didn’t run to him with the details of my life like I did with Mom, but when he heard that my marriage was failing and I was worried about custody he stepped right up.

 

He knew a thing or two about divorce and custody, and he knew that I wasn’t crazy. Most importantly, he knew Becky was the world to me.

 

He put down a generous retainer on the lawyer and told me he would help in whatever way he could. He’d just gone through his second divorce, no children involved, but he was feeling the hurt of a broken relationship and had a lot of sympathy for me. And so began “Operation Buffy’s Bright and Shiny New Life”.

 

Surprisingly, once I started talking to a lawyer, things got better between Mark and I. I felt less resentful because I didn’t feel trapped. Sometimes I went to church with him, Jackson and Becky. I wondered if maybe there was hope for us after all.

 

I liked Mark. I loved him. I just didn’t know how to be a wife to him. I had begun to feel more like his daughter. It was a bit like what had happened with Xander. Once it felt more like Mark was taking care of me than being my partner, the dynamic started to go sideways.

 

Mark’s concern felt a little too paternal, his enthusiasm at my feeling better was like a dad praising his daughter when she learns to ride a bike and less like a husband saying “honey I’m so glad you’re home.”

 

I say it FELT that way because I’m not sure it was that way. I don’t think he was overly condescending towards me, or patronizing or any of that, but that was how I took it.

 

Men have played a strange role in my life. There isn’t any ready parallel, in regular life, to a Watcher. He is not quite teacher, coach or dad. He’s not quite principal, police officer or private eye, but something like all of those put together, with a dollop of super intelligent sidekick on top. You know how Batman has his butler and James Bond has the guy who makes all the gadgets, there was some of that sprinkled in as well.

 

I had a hard time pinning down my relationships with men. I had weird expectations from them. Following my parent’s divorce, I had a ton of resentment towards my father. He had failed me, he had broken up the family. (my mom says it was as much her as him but at the time I had to blame him because I couldn’t afford to alienate her) Next thing I know, I get called as Slayer and I’m facing ultimate evil. Where was he when I needed him?

 

When other men would act fatherly towards me, it really pissed me off. What right did anyone think they had to tell me what to do? I gave Giles and Angel a ton of shit over exactly that.

 

Any boyfriend whoever made reference to himself as “daddy” or called me his “little girl”, was summarily shown the door. Mark acting fatherly towards me, pissed all over the romantic side of our relationship.

 

Things showed a glimmer of improvement when I was sneaking around, behind his back, with a lawyer. I phrase it that way because sometimes when people in a bad marriage start an affair with another partner, the marriage feels a little boost of renewal.

 

An affair isn’t something anyone should start in hopes of saving their marriage, and the little boost is very temporary. My therapist said it’s because the partner feels hopeful because someone loves them and finds them attractive after all. They aren’t doomed to loneliness.

 

When you hire a divorce lawyer, it can reduce some of the stress and fear for the future, but it’s hardly a sign that the marriage is on the mend, and when the spouse finds out, clearly it’s considered a betrayal.

 

Meanwhile...

 

Wendy, who was pretty well apprised about what was going on, but didn’t know all the gory details, told me that Spike was no longer listed as unavailable.

 

You knew this was coming, right?

 

He had shown up on the dial after being MIA for years and because I had asked her to let me know if that ever happened, she did. Knowing he was out there somewhere, did not equate with me being required to see him ever again, nor had Spike claimed to be looking for me.

 

He had been gone just shy of 7 years. Everything in my life had changed, likely everything in his life had changed. 7 years might not be as long in vampire time, but even so, a lot can happen.

 

He could have found 100 new women to sleep with, or even found a serious girlfriend. He may or may not have gotten involved with one of the 4 Slayers that had been called since I retired. Anything could have happened. (but face it, I was pretty much obsessed with his relationship status)

 

Maybe it was Slayer instinct, or maybe I was ready to get bare bones honest with myself, but I was pretty sure the timing, on Spike’s part, wasn’t wholly coincidental.

 

When Spike didn’t turn up after my UCLA graduation, I believed that he had moved on. I couldn’t imagine any reason, other than him being dead or no longer interested in me, that he wouldn’t have come back to claim me. It pissed me off to think that he might have been out there, keeping tabs on me but staying away just the same.

 

I probably should have told Wendy thanks, and that I was glad to know he was alive and well, and to tell Oscar to tell Spike I’d said “hi”. I probably should have waited until I had properly dissolved my marriage.

 

Instead, I told Wendy, to tell Oscar, that if Spike ever happened to, you know...find himself on the West Coast the next time he was in the States, I’d meet him for coffee or whatever.

 

27 hours later there was a knock on my door. I didn’t have to check the peephole to know it was him. Every hair on my body stood up. Every blood vessel dilated. Everything in my entire being screamed vampire.

 

Ironically, or perhaps predictably, he had shown up during “me time”. I was after dark, and “me time” was nearly over. Mark would be home within the hour.

 

“Spike?” I said through the closed door.

 

“Yeah?”

 

You know that heart swelly thing I’ve described a bunch of times. That happened…and then some.

 

I opened the door and there he was, looking devastatingly handsome like he pretty much always did. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Sure he was an old friend, but he was also a vampire and I couldn’t invite him into my husband’s house.

 

I stepped outside.

 

He looked me up and down and swallowed hard. I was certain that he was looking at me and thinking that a lot had changed in 7 years. I was older, sleep deprived, and had a mom’s body.

 

He got that very concerned, disturbed look of his, which could mean just about anything. He stepped towards me and hooked his pointer fingers around mine.

 

Feelings came surging to life. I was like a blender that had been left on high. Now the cord had been plugged in and I was screeching and vibrating my way across the countertop.

 

He looked terrified. For some reason, I found that reassuring.

 

Vampires don’t really blush, but they can go pale, and he went very, very pale. His toes were wiggling and tapping up and down in no particular rhythm, other than intense agitation.

 

“Buffy, can I?”

 

As former Slayer, he offered me right of refusal, even though he knew I no longer had my full strength and couldn’t throw him through a wall.

 

I must have lifted my face to him because I know I didn’t say anything. He took my face in his hands, held my jaw open and did his wacky vampire thing.

 

When he was done, he pulled back and looked even more concerned and disturbed than he had a moment earlier. Oh dear god, what had he found in there?!

 

“I know you can’t invite me in.”

 

“No, I really can’t.” Well, no more than I just had.

 

“Can we meet?”

 

For obvious reasons, a daytime meeting was out. Every night I had Mark and Becky, so that wasn’t going to work. I could make an excuse, say I was meeting a friend… 

 

“Are you staying somewhere?” He must be.

 

“Nowhere I’d take you.” I wouldn’t have thought that Cedar City had too many places less inviting than the vamp flop house in London. Either I was sadly mistaken about the atmosphere of the town I lived in, or his standards had gone up.

 

There was my mom’s, but asking her if I could meet Spike in her house, was unconscionable.

 

“We can, I mean, I want to…but I’m not sure where, or how. I have the baby at nigh.” He didn’t look the least bit surprised at the mention of a baby.

 

He took a scrap of paper out of his pocket. “Call me.”

 

My eyes shot nervously around, what if one of the neighbors saw? Which was a funny thing to worry about. He’d already had his tongue all up in my mouth, so him handing me a piece of paper was no big deal.

 

He kissed my cheek.

 

“I will, but if might be a few--”

 

He put his finger over my lip, and so help me I nipped the tip of it. His eyes went instantly dark and ageless. I backed up and shut the door.

 

……………….

 

“We’re home!” Mark called in a sing-song voice when he and Becky came through the door a short while later.

 

“MAAA,” she yelled.

 

This was everything I stood to lose. I went to them and buried my face in Mark’s chest and wrapped an arm around Becky and did a group hug thing. I hated myself, for not being the person I was two years ago, for not being the wife I was one year ago, for not being able to make this be what I wanted again.

 

I took Becky and got her ready for bed. Mark came into the nursery when I set her into her crib.

 

“Mom says hi,” he told me, gathering my hair in his hand and kissing my cheek.

 

It irritated me more than it should have when he referred to her as “Mom” to me, rather than as “my mom”. I had tried calling Alice “Mom” a few times, but the word came out sounding like a chicken squawk more than a term of endearment.

 

I don’t know if Mark sensed that anything was different that evening. He chattered on brightly about work, and about the talk over dinner at his parent’s house. I remember thinking he must know, that he HAD to know because his voice seemed too bright. He seemed too happy for an ordinary Thursday night. Or was this his normal, and I had simply grown so far out of touch?

 

Later, when we were in bed, Mark pulled me close and nuzzled my hair the way he did when he wanted sex. I had never refused him outright. I mean, of course, there were times I was tired or ill or something, but I’d never cut him dead, quite like I did that night.

 

“I can’t,” I said to him. No explanation. No apology.

 

He rolled onto his back. “I thought things were getting better.”

 

“Better isn’t enough.” It wasn’t. It had to be right. It had to be real. We couldn’t keep doing this for 17 more years “for Becky’s sake”.

 

“So this is it? God Buffy, what went wrong? And I don’t want any bull shit about dreams or memories or anything like that. Just tell me.”

 

“I’m not who I thought I was.” What a lame thing to say, but sometimes the truth is just that stupid.

 

“Fine then. Who are you? Barbra Streisand? Nancy Reagan? Julia Roberts? Or are you a reincarnation of someone? Maybe Catherine the Great.”

 

I had been happy. I had liked working at the car dealership, and volunteering on the Church landscape committee. I had enjoyed planting flowers and pulling weeds. Where the fuck had I gone? Where was the Buffy who would hold one of Jackson’s hands, while Mark held the other, and we’d do 1,2,3 swing?

 

I gave one of those weird hysterical giggles that you sometimes get, when everything is so absurd that there’s nothing else to do, and I said, “I’m Buffy, the Slayer.”

 

Of course, he thought I was being a smart ass. He got pissed off and rolled over. Neither of us fell asleep for a long time, but we pretended we did, so we wouldn’t say anything monumentally stupid to each other.

 

My mother had been bizarrely tolerant and I didn’t want to put her in an impossibly compromising situation, but who am I kidding, that had never stopped me before. I called her up in the morning and asked if I could stay the weekend with her and would it be ok if Spike came over. All in one sentence.

 

“Does Mark know?”

 

“About Spike? No, of course not.”

 

“I mean that you are coming here for the weekend?”

 

“Yeah, we had, it wasn’t a fight. We couldn’t talk to each other last night. I told him I needed to not be there not talking to him. I told him I was going to see you.”

 

“Buffy, does he know it’s over?”

 

“Yeah, I think somewhere around his asking me if I was Barbra Streisand, it became pretty clear.”

 

“And I assume that actually makes sense in your head.”

 

“Not really, but I think I know what he was getting at.”

 

“When did Spike come into the picture?”

 

“Last night about 7:30.”

 

“I’ll stay at Rob’s house tonight. Do what you have to do,” she said tiredly.

 

“I’m sorry.” Here I was pulling her into my issues again in ways that were invasive to her privacy.

 

My brain was already thinking that I had to find a place to live, someplace near her, but not with her. There I was again, making plans that included her without actually telling her I was doing it, assuming she would be a willing part of my backup team.

 

I called Spike and asked if he could meet me at my mother’s that night. He said yes, then asked in an impish tone if he should come to the door or to the window.

 

I left a casserole in the fridge for Mark. I knew he wouldn’t eat it, but felt like I needed to make the gesture. That is how it was with us, we did our polite dance for show, even though no one was watching and neither of us was fooled.

 

I packed up and left for my mother’s during the worst of Friday rush hour traffic. I was punishing myself, as if it would make everything that happened next, OK.

 

When I arrived, Mom was getting a few things together to take to Rob’s. She stopped everything and turned to me. I assumed she wanted to take Becky, but instead, she put the baby down and wrapped me in a hug. She was crying.

 

OMG, I’d made my mother cry, she was so disappointed in me.

 

“It’s going to be alright Buffy. It’s going to hurt like hell, but it’s going to be alright.”

 

Becky, having been plopped down on the floor, now pulled herself up beside the bed and slapped at our thighs with her free hand.

 

“We were alright,” I said to her, us two women going it alone. “We were better than alright.” I meant it.

 

“Tell Spike I said hello.” She was putting things in her bag again. “I assume I’ll see him shortly.”

 

“Probably.” Did she assume that after all this time Spike would still want me? Did I assume that? That was a pretty damn big assumption, bizarre mouth inspection or not.

 

“Bye sweetheart.” She stooped to give Becky a kiss. “Gran Gran will see you tomorrow.”

 

“Thanks, mom,” I said hollowly.

 

“You look like you’re about to be sick.” I think she was laughing at me. “There’s an open bottle of wine in the fridge if you need it. Oh and I got some of those flavored applesauces for Beck, and there’s frozen ravioli if you want some.”

 

There is nothing in the entire world like a good mom. Nothing. I wanted to be that kind of mom. Becky needed that kind of mom.

 

Becky and I went and found the applesauce. She had strawberry and I had blueberry. Then she went to tear apart the magazines on the coffee table, while I sat on the couch with my head in my hands, rocking back and forth.

 

Spike came to the door, but he didn’t knock, he opened it and walked in. He had an open invitation. I wondered why I thought he hadn’t since I’d never done anything to revoke it. He took off his jacket, put it on the coat rack and locked the door.

 

Becky looked at him, then at me, then at him again. I stood up but Spike motioned me to sit.

 

“And this is?” He stooped down beside my little girl.

 

“Becky, meet Spike.” Wow, that sounded weird.

 

He reached his hand out and she took it. “Nice to meet you, Rebecca.” He has never called her anything else.

 

Of course, I asked him why he had become “available”, and where had he been for the interim.

 

“I stayed away because I heard you were happy.”

 

“And you came back because you heard I was unhappy?” I guessed.

 

“I came back because I heard you were VERY unhappy.”

 

OK, so now I had four therapists. The next couple hours were spent with me on one end of the couch, with a pillow to my chest, and Spike on the other end with a mug of wine. (harder for Becky to spill than a glass) I told him what I thought were the salient parts of how Buffy destroyed her marriage.

 

“Do you think there’s any hope?” he asked me. He was handing coasters to Becky one at a time. She was dropping them on the floor for him to pick up, so they could repeat the process.

 

“I don’t know, things seemed…No. I guess I don’t.”

 

“Why didn’t you tell him?”

 

I would have thought that was obvious.

 

“You were going to spend the rest of your life with someone who would never know who you are?”

 

“But I wasn’t Slayer Buffy anymore, I was happy Buffy.” I toyed with the fringe on the pillow.

 

He eyed me, a smile teasing around his mouth. He picked up the coasters again to resume the game.

 

“What?”

 

“Do you really think you’re all these separate Buffy’s? Slayer Buffy, Happy Buffy…” Whatever the next iteration of Buffy he had on his tongue, he opted not to say it.

 

“Not separate exactly. I don’t know how to put it.”

 

“I know something about separate. I wasn’t always a vampire,” he reminded me. “You’ve met William, I believe.”

 

I let his words settle in. Yes, I had. He was here with me now. Spike was his professional name, as he put it, but it wasn’t like he actually had a different persona. He liked me to call him William because he WAS William. Just like Becky was herself whether I was calling her Becky, or my mother was calling her Beck, or Mark was calling her Becky Boo or Spike was calling her Rebecca.

 

“Are you the same as you were when you were a man?”

 

“Course not, that was a long time ago, but I’m not not him. I’ve learned things…DONE things… but I will never not have been a man. I can’t say. Oh, I’m done with that now. Why would I?”

 

“I thought it would be easier, for Mark. For Becky.” I smiled at her.

 

She looked at me and yelled, “MAAAA” at the sound of her name.

 

“Do you think he wouldn’t love you if he knew?” Spike didn’t meet my eyes when he said that.

 

“I think he wouldn’t know what to do with me. He can never understand what being the Slayer means. He still wouldn’t know who I am.”

 

“I knew a girl once. She grew up in France then moved to England and married an Englishman. He didn’t want her to speak French, so she didn’t. Learned the Queen’s English, helped run his pub and all was well till she had a baby.

“He caught her a few times when she thought he wasn’t around, speaking French to their son. He thrashed her, but she didn’t stop. Said she couldn’t NOT speak French to her baby, that she would be lying because a French woman was who she was.”

 

That was how I felt. I had been happy being nonSlayer Buffy, it wasn’t a put on, but when I had Becky I didn’t want to hold back. I wanted to share all of myself with her, even the parts that I hadn’t cared to share with Mark.

 

When you fall in love with a person, they bring certain parts of you to life, pull them to the surface. That was how it was when I fell in love with Becky, so many things came roaring to life.

 

Becky tired of the coaster game. She began to fuss and stomped her way over to me.

 

I put down the pillow and picked her up. She cuddled against my chest, chewing on her fist. I could feel that her diaper was about to explode.

 

I checked the clock. It was way past her bedtime. The novelty of Spike had kept her crankies from kicking in until now.

 

“I’ve got to get her to bed.” I stood up. So did Spike.

 

“Should I go?”

 

“Do you want to go?” I was shocked that he’d asked that.

 

“Course not, but it’s a situation isn’t it?”

 

Yes, it certainly was.

 

“No, stay.” I pointed to his place on the couch. He frowned, and I realized I had just treated him like our dog.

 

I headed upstairs, Becky’s bag was still in my mom’s room. Spike decided not to be an obedient puppy and he followed me.

 

I changed Becky’s diaper and Spike went to the bathroom and came back with a wet washcloth, for me to wipe her sticky hands and face. She was in full fret mode now, wiggling and fussing and waving her angry spitty fist around.

 

I wrestled her into her royal blue sleeper and was about to pick her up when Spike said “May I?” Before I answered, he had picked her up and cradled her in his arms.

 

Becky had outgrown the cradling stage a few months earlier and was now more in on the hip and over the shoulder mode, but she seemed fine with him, her legs dangling. Her forehead was in angry folds, but she wasn’t crying.

 

“You’re doing this on purpose.” I accused him, as he rocked her. “You know how women fall for guys who are good with kids.”

 

He grinned, and neither confirmed nor denied it. He began to sing, in French, the lullaby he’d once hummed to me. OMG, he was putting the vampire thrall on my baby.

 

“Did you learn that from the French girl?”

 

“Learned if from my mum.” He kissed Becky’s head and went on singing.

 

It didn’t take long for her to fall asleep, not because he was so amazing with kids, but because she was exhausted. I motioned for him to set her on my mother’s bed.

 

Then there we were. I made much of wiping my hands on the washcloth and went to put it in the hamper. He came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. “Buffy, how’s this going to work?”

 

I’d thought I had been terribly presumptuous to imagine he might want me, after all this time, after all this baby. After all this everything, but I wasn’t. I recognized his tone of voice and the power in his hands.

 

I was still the Slayer, he was still Spike. I was still Buffy, he was still William, and we would always still be this. This mad crazy thing we were.

 

No more status “unavailable”.

 

“Probably, pretty much the way it always has,” I said to him.

 

Strange sort of foreplay, telling him about my failing marriage. I’d probably done it on purpose, as a test-- Hey, do you want me now? Take that, and that.

 

“Your mum is gone.” Not a question, after all, there was the baby sprawled on her bed.

 

We went to my room and he was about to lock the door when he looked to me. “Should we? With the baby?”

 

“No, leave it open so I can hear her if she needs me.”

 

I’m sure it wasn’t the first time he’d made love with another man’s wife. Or with another man’s baby in the room next door, or in the next bed, or in the same bed. What was that he’d said, about privacy being an American invention?

 

“Let me,” he said, as I began to undress. He kissed every part as he exposed it. I had to smile at how sweet and gentle he could be. I could see his own delight and excitement building. It was a little bit like he was torturing both of us but in a nice way.

 

He began to undress and I sat on the bed and watched him and thought that finally, it was over. I released the breath I’d been holding since I’d first felt Becky kick inside me and had known things would never be the same.

 

I scooted back, making room for him to crawl onto the bed beside me. The lamp was on because I knew he liked to watch. Spike’s face was close to me, his forehead all wrinkled in consternation.

 

“Buffy.” His voice was thick and his hands were jumpy.

 

“It’s OK William, I know how you get.”

 

He smiled like a boy released from school early and did that thing he does.

 

……………...

 

Becky woke up, predictably, around three in the morning. She would want her diaper changed and a drink and she’d go back to sleep.

 

I got up and went to change her diaper and asked Spike to get her little bottle out of the bag and fill it with water. There I was naked in the dark, with wiggly baby reaching for her bottle and watching this new man with her bright eyes.

 

“Will she go back down?”

 

“Usually, sometimes she has a harder time when we’re not at home, but she’s pretty used to being here.”

 

“I’m new.”

 

To her, to me he was old. To me, he was “home” as much as this house was.

 

Becky made a sleepy but defiant sound like she was planning to buck the system, and we both chuckled at her.

 

“Bring her to bed.” He tugged my elbow. Ah, but this was the big no no. Don’t spoil the baby. I admit I didn’t always follow the rules when I was at my mom’s house, after all, what is grandma’s house for if not to be spoiled?

 

As if making love with Spike wasn’t insult enough to Mark, I carried Becky to my room and put her between us. Spike held her bottle with her while she finished her water. She held my finger tight with her free hand. Both of us kissed her head when her eyes closed. Spike put the bottle on the bedside table and we went back to sleep, naked, with my husband’s child between us. 

 

There was no turning back.

…………………..

 

“How did you get so good with babies?” I asked him in the morning while we were having breakfast. Becky was in her high chair, being spoon fed yogurt in between shoving sticky cheerios into her mouth.

 

Spike was having his usual weak, milky tea.

 

I was eating yogurt out of the same carton as Becky and she found it tremendously funny when I put the spoon into my own mouth.

 

“I’m not especially good. Just treat them like I’d like to be treated.” He shrugged. “I’m not much for the new ways.”

 

“Meaning?”

 

“Keeping them too clean, too safe, too bloody far away from the thick of things.” Hence the communal bed and rocking her to sleep rather than laying her down and telling her to cry it out.

 

“Should hardly have to teach them a damn thing about life, they should suck it up like air. Live it, not be told about it.” He was very adamant for someone, whom to my knowledge, had no children of his own.

 

He went to the fridge and poured me orange juice and refilled the baby’s sippy cup.

 

Maybe I was living on vampire time, because this felt so normal and familiar as if we’d had breakfast here with my mom just yesterday.

 

Becky broke into tears, which signaled the end of her meal. That was how she went, from happily stuffing her face one moment, to immediate and total frustration with her sticky hands, messy face and the confinement of the high chair.

 

Spike handed me the roll of paper towels.

 

“Wet one.” I handed them back and while he was dampening some, he laughed and asked me, “How many adults does it take to wash a baby?”

 

“I thought it was how many does it take to screw in a lightbulb.”

 

“Adults don’t screw in a lightbulb, they screw in a bed.”

 

We both laughed and Becky decided, that if we thought it was funny, it must be, so she laughed too.

 

Reasonably clean and with most of the yogurt wiped from her hair, she took off across the kitchen floor, her bare feet slapping on the tile. She looked back over her shoulder at us, to see if we were going to follow.

 

I kept a cabinet of supplies at my mother’s house but I had let it run low. Spike went back upstairs to sleep and Becky and I went shopping. She was a happy baby, waving her fuzzy bear teething toy around.

 

She batted at the items I put into the cart, as we went up and down the food aisles. I picked up things to replenish my mother’s baby stash and a few treats for my mom, who as always, was going above and beyond.

 

I felt calm. Like I knew that somehow this was all going to work out. Maybe it was the result of good Spike sex. It had to be more than that. He was good, but he wasn’t magical, though he came close to it.

 

I wasn’t in a hurry to get back to my mom’s. I wanted to savor this for awhile. I didn’t want to rush back, acting like I didn’t believe he’d still be there like his status had returned to “unavailable”.

 

“Becky.” I kissed her nose.

 

“Becky boo!” she said Mark’s name for her.

 

“Becky boo!” I agreed, to which she sagely replied,“Boo Boo Boo, mama. Daiy.” She threw her bear and squirmed. She wanted out of the shopping cart. Daiy was her version of daddy. I wonder if she realized it was Saturday and she was wondering where Mark was. She would be fine when we went back to my mother’s. She adored Gran Gran.

 

Becky fell asleep in the car, and I went through my usual nail biting over what to do first, bring her in, which would likely wake her, or leave her in the car while I hoofed it back and forth to the house a few times. That would make me feel like a horrible mommy for leaving my baby in the car and out of my sight for all of 25 seconds. That’s why kids need two parents, for those incredibly important monumental decisions. At hom, I’d just yell for Mark. Spike couldn’t help me even if he wanted to, it was high noon and he would burst into flame.

 

I opted for guilt and left Becky in her car seat while I made three trips back and forth. When I got to the porch the fourth time, holding a cranky, hungry baby, Spike was there taking the bags into the kitchen.

 

He held up a bottle of wine and cocked his head at me. “I would have thought Rebecca tended more towards the medium reds, a well bodied Malbec.”

 

“Ha ha. It’s for my mother.”

 

“You look beat.” He noticed.

 

“It’s a phase, I hear it will get better when she hits 21.”

 

“Yes, I’m sure that’s when your mum stopped worrying about you,” he said smartly. He was unpacking grocery bags.

 

“MAMAMAMAMA Daiy.” Hysterical tears

 

I went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle to heat up for Becky. This would get her ready to settle down for a real nap, she could have a meal later.

 

“I don’t know where all of this goes, shall I get creative or leave it for you?” Spike had put the refrigerated items away and was now frowning over the dry goods.

 

“Since when did you get so domestic?” It was a bit surprising to see him putting tomatoes in the crisper.

 

“Life on the lam is overrated.”

 

“Do you actually have a home somewhere?”

 

“Now, now, it’s a bit early for 20 questions, Luv.” Was it? I had poured out my life story to him.

 

Spike dampened some paper towels and wiped angry Becky’s face, while I tested her bottle. She hung on my legs until I picked her up. “Listen here you,” I told her very sternly. “You are going to drink this bottle. EVERY drop and then you are going to sleep. Do you hear me, baby?”

 

She drew her brows together very seriously. I did the same and she erupted in a milky laugh around the nipple of her bottle.

 

She motioned for down. I handed her the bottle and she wobbled away towards the dining room where my mother had a dog bed on the floor for her. Yes, you heard me. She had a big comfy pillow on the dining room floor with a corduroy cover. It was where we put her down when we were all going to be downstairs and didn’t want her upstairs alone. She loved it. It was Beck’s Bed and she regularly put herself to sleep on it.

 

Spike followed her to see where she was off to with such determination. He laughed when she threw herself down on her back, and sucked her bottle, occasionally stopping to sing.

 

When he came back, I was putting away the groceries he’d left on the counter due to his lack of creativity.

 

“You hungry?” I asked him. He gave me a look. “For food. I assume you ate...someone before you got here last night.” My brain felt like it had cracked into a million pieces with that one.

 

“Relax, I’ve been on the up and up.”

 

Thank goodness. I really just didn’t want to have to think about anything that was more wrong with this situation than I already knew.

 

We heard the front door open. “Yoo-hoo, anyone home?” my mother called.

 

Becky heard her and gave a yelp from her dog bed. Spike heard her and met my eye. I heard her and said, “In the kitchen.”

 

“SOMEONE’S not in the kitchen.” I could hear Becky giggling at Gran Gran’s approach. There went nap time.

 

Becky didn’t have a lot of words that were crystal clear, but she could say Gran Gran just about perfectly.

 

“Hey, Beck. Hey, Becky boo!” Mark wasn’t the ONLY one who called her that.

 

My mom came into the kitchen and saw Spike. He went to her immediately and brought her hand to his lips. “Joyce,” he said with a bow, brushing his lips over her knuckles.

 

She looked at him for a full second and pulled him into a hug. They hugged, rocking each other back and forth for a second or two. Deja weird. It felt weird and normal at once. Since when did my mother love Spike?

 

She was clearly relieved to see him, with a dash of overjoyed and not even a hint of “oh boy, here comes trouble.”

 

I had expected Becky to follow my mom into the kitchen, but she stayed singing on her dog bed until she fell asleep.

 

My mother didn’t waste time on banal niceties with Spike. No “how have you been” or “what brings you to town.” She seemed to assume I had brought him up to speed on everything.

 

I made my mother and I sandwiches while we talked about my situation.

 

“So how much does Mark know?” She nodded towards Spike.

 

“Just that I came here. I mean, I guess he knows it’s over for good, but I didn’t say anything about…”

 

“And you’re not going to.”

 

“Well, of course not.” Did she think I was stupid? “I guess I may as well talk to the Lawyer this week and file for a formal separation.”

 

We all looked glum.

 

“Are you going to move here?” My mother asked automatically.

 

“Well, I don’t know. I guess we need to talk with the Lawyer. He said it might be best if I don’t vacate the residence.” Here I was, already talking legalese.

 

“Tell Mark to go stay with Alice.” My mom smirked at me, then said, “He’ll want to take Becky with him.”

 

I said tiredly, “The Lawyer said that he would submit the argument that the baby stays with me in the house, so there would be the least upset to her routine. Mark will be caught off guard, he doesn’t expect this, not yet.”

 

“You’ve got the jump on him then?” Spike didn’t know as much as my mother assumed.

 

“Till he tries to prove I’m crazy and an unfit mother.” I picked at the crust of my bread.

 

“Good thing you never told him about the Slayer bit then,” Spike said.

 

My mother met my eye. “On the other hand, maybe all of this could have been prevented.”

 

Yes maybe all of it could have been, but then I wouldn’t have Becky and I would never wish her away.

 

I didn’t want to talk lawyers and strategy, but a line had been crossed and there was no time to waste now.

 

“I guess that’s my walking papers,” Spike said with a sigh.

 

Oh no, no, no. He was not just going to leave again. Give me a mercy fuck then he’s off on a jaunt around the world!

 

Both he and my mother noticed my face.

 

“Buffy, you can’t have a lover,” he said.

 

“Not if you want custody,” my mother added.

 

The Lawyer had asked me right from the start if there was another man and of course there hadn’t been, but now?

 

“They’re going to pick your life over with a comb, babe. If they find out you have another man, they’ll pick him over too and it won’t look good that you were exposing Becky to an affair.”

 

“And god only knows if they started looking into my history,” Spike added.

 

“They wouldn’t find anything.”

 

“Exactly.”

 

“Ok. First thing Monday, but can I have a day? One day?” I looked from one to the other.

 

“Buffy,” Spike called my attention to him. “I’m not disappearing. We just can’t be--”

 

“Humping like crazed sex poodles,” my mother finished the thought and put a potato chip in her mouth.

 

All three of us burst out laughing.

 

Spike and my mother sat down to play some backgammon. I called Mark and told him we were at my mom’s and would be staying the weekend. I reminded him about the casserole, and he asked me if I was sure I didn’t want to come home and go to church with them in the morning.

 

“I’d like to bring Becky,” he said, his tone just a tiny bit threatening.

 

“We’re just going to hang out here...you know she loves her Gran Gran.”

 

“I won’t have seen her all weekend Buffy. I understand things are uncomfortable between you and me, but Becky shouldn’t have to suffer for it while we work things out.”

 

“She’s fine here. We’ll be home Monday...or tomorrow night. We can come then. She’s...she’s so excited to be here with Gran Gran.”

 

“They can have their day. I’ll swing by and pick her up tonight.”

 

“No, don’t. I mean if it’s that big a deal...”

 

“It’s fine, you probably need some time to talk to your mother. Stay. I just don’t want--We don’t need to advertise our problems any more than we already have. That won’t help anything.” I knew he was thinking about advertising it not only at Church but to his parents as well. He was being very sensible.

 

“Can I talk to Becky?” he asked.

 

“She’s taking a nap, we were shopping this morning. She’s tired.”

 

I could hear him considering whether or not I was telling him the truth.

 

“She’s sleeping Mark, of course, I’d let her talk to you and of course you can take her to church.”

 

“I promised Jackson we’d go out for pizza tonight? How about you join us and I’ll take the kids home with me. Your mother should come too.”

 

Mark liked my mom, and he believed he had an ally in her. After all, she’d gone on that trip with me, and she supported me seeing a therapist and shared some of his concerns about my well being.

 

He didn’t know she was helping me plot against him. I am sure he thought that a fun pizza outing with my mom would have her telling me to wise up and that I had too much to lose.

 

“I know she has plans this evening.” Lie. “But I’ll meet you and Jackson. Where will you be?” Perfect, Spike was going to be leaving town and I was going to have to waste an entire evening at Chuckie Cheese.

 

I was so going to come back to my mother’s house and fuck his brains out twice as hard, just to get back at Mark.

 

OMG, who had I become?

 

Mark and I made arrangements. I hung up the phone and went to the living room. Becky was awake, standing at Spike’s knee, handing him coasters, which he would drop on the floor. She’d laughed hysterically and hand them to him again, to repeat the process, an exact reversal of their game from the night before.

 

She turned, saw me and grinned, proud of herself for training him so well in so short a time. She lost her balance, sat down too hard and bumped her chin on the table. She was more startled than hurt, but she immediately began to cry. My mother reached for her, I stepped towards her, and Spike picked her up said: “That’s not part of the game, Luv.” In such a serious tone that she nearly looked ashamed of herself.

 

He looked her straight in the eye, she smacked his cheek. He handed her his dice cup from the backgammon game and set her back down. She threw the dice cup and began to hand him coasters once again.

 

My mother met my eye. Oh yeah, Becky and Spike could NOT spend time together. Without even thinking about it, he would commandeer her. In 24 hours she would be his, or vice versa. He seemed to have a way with Summers women. He certainly made an impression and I did not need for Becky to come home and tell Daiy Daiy all about Spike.

 

I gave Becky a bath and packed her bag. She was all ready to go meet Daddy and brother Jackson for pizza! Mom gave her a raspberry grandma kiss on the cheek, which got the anticipated giggle.

 

Spike took her tiny hand and kissed it and said: “It was lovely to make your acquaintance Rebecca.”

 

She leaned toward him, mouth open, her signal for wanting to give someone a kiss. He offered her his cheek, which she happily drooled on. Then he kissed the top of her head, and the top of my head and sent us on our way.

 

I didn’t ask him what he and my mother talked about while I was gone. I assume she filled him in on anything he needed to know, and I assume he told her that he wasn’t going to cause any trouble. I assume, they both agreed they were going to do anything to help me through this, but it’s all conjecture. They might have ordered Chinese food, drank beer and argued over game shows, for all I know.

 

I played happy little family with Mark and the kids for about two hours. Mark was trying to remind me of how much fun we could all have together, here we were, out with our two great kids! They were great kids. Mark was a great guy. I was a lying, cheating, mixed up woman who was still in love with a vampire from her past.

 

When it was time to go, Becky cried and reached for me. “Come on Buff...follow us home. We can put the kids to bed, put our feet up...We left it on a bad note.” He put his hand on my waist and gave me his most open smile. “It’s not too late. You don’t have to come to church in the morning, or even to my mom’s tomorrow. Just come home with me tonight.”

 

I don’t think things would have worked out differently if I had said yes and gone home with him. It wouldn’t have fixed the marriage or changed how I felt. We might have made love. We might have bought ourselves another few weeks of marriage therapy and trying to play nice, but I didn’t go home with him. 

 

“No Mark, I can’t.” I put my hands over his. He moved to kiss me and I turned away. “I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

 

I think he knew something then. This was different. I was cold now. I couldn’t stand the thought of his hands on me. Spike had come back and I was his. Just like that.

 

“I’ll see you tomorrow night?” His eyes were cold but his voice was gentle.

 

I nodded, waved to the kids and got into my car. I rested my head on the steering wheel and waited until Mark pulled away, and then a few minutes more. I don’t know if I expected him to follow me or what, but I just needed to know he was gone.

 

At home, I said goodnight to my mom and Spike and I went upstairs. It was early but I was worn out and impossibly sad.

 

“You know I won’t do anything that will jeopardize this. I’ll clear out...till it’s over,” he told me, as he sat taking his shoes off.

 

“And then?” What constituted “over”? When the divorce was final when custody was worked out? When Becky was 18 and going off to college? Anyone of those scenarios could count as tomorrow in vampire time.

 

“We’ve tried the other, you and I. Trying to make a go of life apart. You don’t belong with Mark or any other. You belong with me.”

 

“And you?” It was him who’d posted his status as “unavailable”.

 

“I’m done with standing on the sideline trying to behave, Buffy. I’ve been all around the world and you’re the only thing that feels like home. I stayed away because I hoped you were happy, knew you were trying to be happy.”

 

“I was happy...for awhile.”

 

“And I let you be, yeah?”

 

“I didn’t want you to.”

 

“But we would have always wondered if you could have had another kind of life. Your mom would have skinned me, and you wouldn’t have Rebecca.”

 

Yes, we did all think I should make a go of it, but I wondered about my mom. Maybe she wouldn’t have skinned Spike, maybe she already knew. She had been worried about me marrying Mark. But I wouldn’t have Becky.

 

I sent him to get me some wine while I got into my PJ’s. He came back with a glass of wine for me and some dark whiskey for himself, something ancient my mother had in the cupboard from some long forgotten occasion.

 

He told me stories of his various intoxications, of one kind or another, all over the planet. Spells, potions, liquor, teas, things he smoked, popped, shot or otherwise tripped on.

 

“So what was the best?” I had finished my wine and tasted his whiskey.

 

“Robitussin and vodka,” he teased. I had once confessed to him drinking that awful concoction in middle school to get “high”. “Opium,” he said.

 

“That’s heroin right.”

 

“Heroin is stronger, but I don’t like it as much,” he allowed.

 

“You’ve done heroin?”

 

“I’ve done just about everything.” He looked at me like he expected me to have known as much. I kind of did, but I kind of didn’t understand it either. I didn’t really understand a life with no consequences, with no responsibility.

 

I knew what it was like to be stronger than everyone around you, to be able to physically bring anyone around to your way of thinking, but it hadn’t gotten me far. I wasn’t the type to beat people into submission. If I was, well, I could still take Mark, easily.

 

But Spike hadn’t often had reasons to say no. He couldn’t get physically addicted, or ill. He owed allegiance to very few. What would I do if I was like him? What wouldn’t I do?

 

“So how’d you do it?” He wasn’t the crack house type.

 

“Smoking opium in a brothel, with friends. Girl on either knee and one in between.” His eyes had a far away look. This was the man who I’d let spoon around my daughter the night before.

 

“Why are you even with me?” My life was small and stupid and prosaic.

 

“Problem with you Buffy, is you’ve got your priorities all mixed up.” He tapped my head.

 

I had my priorities mixed up? This man who had done everything was going to talk to ME about priorities?

 

“What makes you think that is any better than this?” he challenged me.

 

“Um, what man wouldn’t rather have three women than one?”

 

“One who’s got you.”

 

Mom always said he was a charmer.

 

“I tried it, I liked it. May want it again. Might want a lot of things, but now I want to be with you. If I didn’t I’d be somewhere else.” He was just saying it like it was, no hard sell.

 

He knew what was out there. If he wanted all those things he knew how and where to get them.

 

We were lying back on my bed. He held our hands up towards the ceiling, fingers splayed like the points of a star. “Only one Buffy. Only here. Only now.”

 

“I don’t want you to go. I don’t want to do this alone. I don’t want to do this without you.”

 

He didn’t say anything for a bit, he was just looking at our hands. “You need to be careful. This,” he motioned to the bed. “Not worth losing your daughter for.”

 

I understood that. It wasn’t sex I was thinking of. But I knew he knew that as well.

 

“Maybe just until it’s settled, a bit. We could meet in a time zone of our own. Yeah?” 

 

“You still have your guy?”

 

“He has a remedy for time shift hangovers. Tells me it works a charm.”

 

There had to be some upside to the crazy life I’d led. To the magics and marvels and dimensions.

 

I crawled onto his chest. “We can really do that?” The idea of having a “place”, even if it was another time signature, where I could be me, with Spike, was a dream come true.

 

“Course we can, and you’ll like it better when all of you is in the same place and time.”

 

“I’ll like it better because you’ll be there too.”

 

“But that’s just a lark, you know that. Doesn’t replace this. This life. Us being together in this time.”

 

This time. We made love, to cement that we were both here, in THIS time and THIS place.

 

“Am I doing a terrible thing? Breaking up my family, taking Becky away from her daddy.”

 

“Family sounds like it’s a lost cause, but taking your baby? It’ll likely tear his heart up.”

 

“You’re supposed to tell me I’m doing the right thing.” I gave him a shove.

 

“We’re doing what we need to do, but we can’t dress it up as a kindness to him.”

 

He’d said we.

 

“Right or wrong doesn’t count for much, it’s the strongest one wins, or the smartest.”

 

“Or the one with the best lawyer,” I repeated what I’d heard several people say.

 

“Yeah, that--probably more than the rest.” He rolled towards me and pushed up on his elbows. “I’m not like your husband, Buffy.”

 

Nothing like stating the obvious.

 

“When this is over when it’s been worked out. I won’t let you go, not you or the little one. If you don’t want that...US...send me away now. I don’t fancy dropping in for a quick shag every now and then. Not anymore.”

 

He was asking a lot, or not asking, claiming a lot.

 

“Vampire stepdaddy.”

 

“And she’ll know who you are. None of that “explain it to her later” business…”

 

“You want to raise Mark’s child?”

 

“I don’t give a damn about Mark. She’s yours. If Mark gives you trouble I’ll break his bloody neck. He’s nothing to me.”

 

“You can’t do that.”

 

“I can, but I won’t.”

 

This was not a mortal man. This was a man who could afford to do anything because he had a very long time to get over it.

 

“Let me do this the right way.”

 

“I won’t stand by and let this go to pieces on you. You’ve been through enough.”

 

“I have to live in this world. And I chose him to be her father.”

 

“A mistake that can be fixed.”

 

“If you want me, Becky, my mom--our family, then we do this the right way.”

 

Of course, he knew this. He was saying this all because he needed to know how I felt about it. What I expected. What I was and wasn’t willing to do to get what I wanted.

 

He kissed me, “Like I said, I don’t want to put this in jeopardy, not sure I’ll behave myself if I stay.”

 

“I have faith in you.”

 

“You shouldn’t.” He nipped my shoulder. “You more than anyone, know how I get.”

Here is the lullaby Spike sang to Becky. La petite poule grise, The Little Grey Chicken https://www.youtube.coL m/watch?v=zYi-FP_kgrI


	26. The One Where I Try to Find a Time Zone of My Own

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spike and Buffy take advantage of a little supernatural relief during one of life's most difficult challenges.

The One Where I Try To Find Time Zone of My Own

 

The longer I live, the more I’m convinced that the only thing in my life that is a direct result of my having been the Slayer, is Spike. Pretty much everything else is the result of the same day to day issues that everyone deals with. I’m not such a special snowflake after all.

 

From speaking with the moms in my group, I found out that having a baby, especially the first one, takes a toll on a lot of marriages. It totally throws the marriage and all it’s based on, onto its head. Even if you really wanted kids, when it happens, you can’t have been prepared for what it’s like and what you and your partner will be like as parents.

 

The erosion of my marriage to Mark wasn’t all the result of the dark secret I was hiding. Once I had my own child, I didn’t want to play surrogate with Jackson and I didn’t want to share parenting decisions with Mark. I had had to sit on the sidelines and play by the rules he and his first wife had made for Jackson. I wanted to throw my own weight around when it came to OUR child. Having two sets of rules and expectations for two kids in the household did not make for marital bliss.

 

The week following Spike’s return, I drove back and forth to see my mother and my lawyer twice, all the while smiling and lying to Mark about where I was while he was at work. Spike said he needed to talk to his guy and cleared out, promising me it was only for a few days while he settled some things.

 

My lawyer did advise that I “remain in the family residence” (be prepared for lots of legal talk, it’s surreal when you find yourself speaking that way to your friends and family) He also told me to set up my own bank accounts, and designate a safe house where Becky and I could go, and where Mark wouldn’t be able to find us, in case things got dangerous.I told him they wouldn’t but he said that people do crazy things in the course of a divorce. There were lots of forms to sign, and lots of tears to cry.

 

Since you probably already hate me, I may as well tell you what a shit I was. I told the women in my mom's group that I was divorcing Mark before I told him. The moms pretty much told each other everything. Well, at least in groups of twos and threes. There were some gossips in the group but there were also stalwarts that would take your secrets to the grave.

 

I received heartfelt advice, plus understanding and solidarity out the wazoo. These women were incredible. I’m not saying they all supported my decision. Breaking up a marriage is a big deal, I had received a ton of support and encouragement to work things out with Mark during the previous year, but once it was clear things weren’t going to work out, they were there for me.

 

Of course, a few asked me if there was “someone else” and I maintained not, except to one close friend. I didn’t tell her he was a vampire, but I did tell her that Spike was an old flame that I’d had a thing with on and off since high school. I didn’t anticipate her response. She’d been nothing but supportive, so this came out of nowhere.

 

“Those hardly ever work out, you know,” she told me. “They feel great at the time, like, oh, here is someone who really understands me. But it’s usually just an excuse. A safety net.”

 

Becky was following her two-year-old son around. She had no idea how to actually play with another child other than throwing small toys at each other and crying, but she liked to watch.

 

“I don’t think it’s like that.” I said, but it kind of was just like that. Mark couldn’t understand about my Slayer past, and Spike intrinsically did.

 

“Hey, I get it. My sister went through it. Divorce is a killer. You feel like a failure and there’s this guy that tells you how wonderful you are. We need that. Who the hell doesn’t?” She shook a bag of animal crackers and called to her son, much like summoning a dog.

 

“Truth is Buff, and nothing against your Mr. Wonderful, but men don’t like raising other men’s kids. They like fucking other men’s wives, makes them feel tough, but who wants to work hard to take care of another guy’s kid?”

 

Her son came right over with Becky at his heels. In her attempt to hurry after him, Beck fell on her butt and yelled for me in frustration. I went to pick her up, but she righted herself, ignored me and ran to my friend for her share of animal crackers. She was already an independent girl who knew her own mind!

 

“You think?”

 

“He’s probably telling you he’ll be there for you, right? And he probably believes it, but you thought you and Mark would make it too, then you found out it wasn’t what you expected. That YOU weren’t what you expected.” She handed out crackers to the kids, one for each hand so they wouldn’t fight.

 

Her words were sending chills through me. I knew how it was with step kids, or at least step KID. It had nothing to do with Jackson not being loveable. It had to do with being more invested in my child than someone else’s, even though that someone else was my own husband.

 

“I don’t want to burst your bubble, and by all means hang onto him. You’ll need all the support you can get. You might find out that once it’s all said and done you don’t want him around after all. My sister has thrown out three boyfriends since her divorce, she says it’s not worth it. She’d rather be on her own.”

 

That sounded very sordid and depressing to me. Would I just end up with a string of live-in boyfriends, sending Becky off to see her dad so I could have some alone time with them, then sending them on their way and my little girl asking what happened to Uncle Don, or Lou, or whatever? If that was my future I should try harder to work things out with Mark.

 

“You can count on me, and your mom. It’s going to be fine.” She handed me two animal crackers, one for each hand, out of sheer habit.

 

I wanted to tell her Spike was different. He wasn’t with me because our relationship was convenient and I was hurting so I was an easy lay, and he could feel like a hero. He’d crossed the globe to be with me, time and time again. Still, what made me think this globe-trotter was ready to settle down, and why did I think he wanted to raise a child?

 

My mom and I made a checklist of things to do before I told Mark, then an after-list of things to expect from the domino effect. We tried to organize what is, by nature, a chaotic event. My life was going to be blown wide open, and we were trying to predict where the shrapnel would land.

 

Spike and I had begun talking on the phone, and it felt beyond strange. The only other time I had ever spoken to him on the phone was when I called the number he had left me and told him to meet me at my mother’s. This time he was checking in on progress, and hoping he could see me.

 

We needed to see each other before I told Mark, because the minute I told him I had filed for divorce, he was going to start looking for “the other man”. Since telling Mark was on the timeline for a week from Tuesday, Spike and I needed to set a date.

 

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I told him. “Setting up a time to hook up with my vampire.” This was a level of sneakery that we’d never resorted to even when I was a teen.

 

“Yeah,” Spike sounded puzzled. “Don’t think I ever gave a buggering fuck before if some bloke found out I was sleeping with his wife.”

 

Well, wow. It was heartening to hear that his sordid affair with me had at least one unique thing about it. I have to tell you now, so you won’t hate him too, or hate me any more than you already do, that Spike actually does know a thing or two about diplomacy, has a shocking level of self-control (except in bed with me), and was always appropriate around Becky.

 

“So, are we meeting in real time or are we trying out this time zone thing?” I mused, in for a penny, in for a pound.

 

“Let’s have a go in real time, probably our last for a while.” Spike’s voice sounded hollow.

 

“At Mom’s, for old time sake?”

 

He was quiet for longer than I was comfortable with.

 

“I have a place. Of my own. Here. Wasn’t sure if I should tell you. Don’t want you to come running here if things get ugly. It could make a hash of everything.”

 

He didn’t trust me. He thought I might give it all away in a fit of emotion. He might’ve been right.

 

“I need a safe house. The Lawyer said. A place to go if Mark goes rogue.”

 

“Yeah, but that should be with a girlfriend or somewhere, not here. I know how YOU are. You can’t get caught with me, Buffy.”

 

Was I that way? Reckless? Flash back to trip to Cleaveland. Point taken. When I get emotional, I’m all over the place.

 

“Well, you must have a friend, you have friends everywhere.” He never seemed to lack for cronies or favors.

 

“Don’t forget, Luv, last time I was in town I was fighting on the wrong side of the fissure, didn’t earn me points with the locals. And you know the sort I do business with, not likely to offer me a love nest with the gal who spoiled their fun.”

 

Consequences, the kind you never consider, like how hard it’s going to be to meet up with your lover because you fought on the side of good.

 

I’ve mentioned before the “it’s not personal” aspect of many of my supernatural dealings. There was a lot of ritualistic “battle” and negotiations. There is what you do in a war, what you do in business, and what you do in your personal affairs and the lines of demarcation are clear. Connections that would happily hire Spike to work for them, or do business with him would still hesitate to be involved in anything that might be considered his personal life.

 

Personal life is a sticky area. Things get dangerous and confusing very quickly and nothing can destroy professional relationships and friendships more quickly than getting involved in another person’s love affairs. Some of these characters would have lent Spike one thousand karats of emeralds before they would offer him a place to meet his sweetheart. How could they know I didn’t have some violent, hulking demon husband who would come in and disintegrate them for getting involved?

 

“Ha, you should come here.” I had no right to feel that vindictive and defiant towards Mark. It wasn’t really him that I was angry with, it was the situation and all the pain ahead of us. Even though he was guilty of no wrongdoing, I had to make him the enemy somehow, or how could I fight against him? Still, having another man in his bed was a line I didn’t want to cross.

 

“Much as I’d love to, that would be bloody stupid.”

 

“And not at all fair to Mark. This isn’t his fault.” I conceded.

 

“Yeah well, you can’t afford to be soft on him. Someone needs to stay hard-nosed. Guess I have a right to as much as anyone,” Spike said with a hint of outrage.

 

“You?”

 

“Certainly. He’s got what’s mine. Keeping my girls away from me.”

 

Girls. He said, GIRLS. My head and heart exploded a little bit. Maybe my friend was wrong about Spike. She didn’t know about vampire time. What might feel like a life sentence to an ordinary man, might feel like nothing but a lark to him.

 

“You’re enjoying your role as the Happy Homewrecker.” Observation, not accusation. He certainly was stepping up for the role.

 

“Sure, why not?” He had no conscience at all. “Haven’t really done it up right before. If the husband caused trouble, I killed him.”

 

Yes, I should have run screaming, but just like there is vampire time, there is Slayer brain. You get it from having lived in a world where that sort of thing happens every day. Spike had lived in times and places and filled roles where that was what he did, but times change, and he’d traveled to other places and he’s learned how to get along with people. I knew he wasn’t going to hurt Mark. He wasn’t even going to see Mark. Spike’s days of eviscerating jealous spouses were over.

 

Spike had played hundreds of roles over the decades, and they weren’t just play acting. He was who he needed to be in the thousand different situations he’d found himself in. He’d had time and opportunity to experiment far beyond what humans have. They say you never know who you really are until you are in a situation yourself. He’d been in an unimaginable number of situations already and had that many more ahead of him. I think he was curious all the time to find out what lay round the next bend.

 

“I don’t want to ask my mother again.”

 

“I don’t think you should. Not for this bit,” he agreed. The divorce was one thing, an affair was another. In his own way, I think Spike respects my mother above all people on the planet. He says that other than her inviting him into the house the first time he came to the door, he’s never seen her do a stupid thing.

 

“You really won’t tell me where you live?” It would be so much simpler.

 

He waited for me to get over myself.

 

I called up my Mom's group friend.

 

“I don’t approve of what you’re doing Buffy. I mean, yeah, the divorce, that was going to happen, but having a man right now.” I could hear her scowl and sigh.” I’ll watch Becky for you if you need me to. Just tell me you have a lawyer’s appointment or are going to see the marriage counselor.”

 

That still didn’t solve the where, which had to be someplace Spike could get to during the day. We could have rented a hotel room like every other cheating couple on the planet, but I balked at the idea of that. It had been different when we were in London and he scored us that posh room. Now we were scrimping pennies and I didn’t want to meet him, to cheat on my husband, in a cheap motel.

 

His guy had “a guy” who had “a place”. When we met, a weird thing happened, something neither of us anticipated. We didn’t know what to do with each other. The idea of using this time to get our rocks off in some desperate hurried rush was offensive to both of us.

 

Think S7 “Empty Places”, Spike and Buffy in an abandoned house holding each other through the night. In our case, it was 4 hours on a Monday afternoon, the day before Mark was served the papers. We needed to be close to each other and enjoy a calm before the storm, the last opportunity to rest in each other and, if necessary, to back out at the last minute.

 

We talked about things that didn’t matter and things that didn’t pertain to the marriage or custody or any of it. I told him funny things that had happened at my different jobs, and gossip about Dawn and HE told me he had actually attended two of her performances in NYC! She was going to love it when she found out.

 

Spike told me a story of a woman he was with many years ago. She was a baker for a royal court and was making an elaborate wedding cake. He was in the kitchen watching as the cake was put together. They had several people working on it and they were creating magical things out of sugar, pulling it and spinning it like glass, creating roses and ribbons and birds with fancy tails. The woman spun a little bird for him and put it into his hands. He said it was a perfect moment of magical shared delight. A moment where they were just two, amid the flurry and worry over the elaborate cake, captured in a perfect little spun sugar birdie.

 

He said he’d felt that way when we lay in bed with Rebecca between us. His hand and hers on her bottle and her holding my finger tight. That was when he knew it had to be. His confidence was catching. When he told of that moment, I believed that it could all come to pass, and we would have other moments.

 

Saying goodbye to him that afternoon was horrible. I felt like I was leaving the light of day to step into cement shoes and be tossed into the ocean.

 

Of course, Mark wasn’t surprised that I wanted a divorce. He was surprised that I’d had the papers drawn up already. The first thing he asked was if I planned to move to my mother’s, and I said no, I was going to stay in the house.

 

“You’re kicking ME out?” He almost found it amusing but was too sad to actually laugh about it. “I’m not the one that wants this. I’m not the one who’s lost their mind.” He didn’t say that in an insulting way if that makes any sense. He really thought I was bonkers and didn’t really understand what I was doing.

 

“I’m not kicking you out. I’m asking you to leave.” Semantics Buffy, especially since the lawyer had people on hand to encourage Mark should he resist.

 

“And where am I supposed to keep Becky and Jackson? And Mica? know you don’t want the dog.”

 

“Becky stays with me.”

 

That actually DID surprise him. He couldn’t believe that I thought he’d let his daughter stay with her mentally disturbed mother.

 

“Listen Buffy, just let me take Becky to mom’s for a few days while you pull yourself together and think things through.”

 

Sure, a few days during which he and his mom will find a lawyer and start building a case against me. I wasn’t letting Becky out of my sight. I knew how this legal stuff worked, I’d already done it.

 

“I’m done thinking things through. I’m just, done.” My voice was void of emotion because I didn’t know what to feel. I didn’t know what was safe to feel. It was better to remain inscrutable.

 

“Is there someone else?” He had to ask. I don’t blame him.

 

This I had anticipated and prepared for. I mean literally, I practiced my response with my mom. I didn’t miss a beat, nor did I rush and make it sound defensive.

 

“This is between you and me, and I can’t be your wife anymore.” We decided that was better than “of course not, how could you even think that of me!”

 

He maintained he was taking Becky and I told him he wasn’t. I stood there knowing that even though I had nothing like my Slayer strength, I still had superhuman strength for my size, and if he touched the baby I was going to put him through a wall. He must have seen something terrible in my face. Instead of further argument, he called his mom, told her he was coming by and that he'd explain it to her when he got there. I doubt she was surprised.

 

I felt awkward staying in the house without Mark. I didn’t want to be there. Our house was attractive, but I didn’t love it. It was just a house in a nice enough town, but a town I wasn’t especially attached to. The house meant nothing to me other than a bargaining chip in the divorce and custody case.

 

I didn’t like rattling around in it just the two of us. Becky wanted to see Mark. The last thing I wanted was Becky caught in the crossfire, or used as a bargaining tool or ever made to feel like any of it was about her. I almost told Mark to come back and we’d just sleep in separate beds, because it seemed easier, and I felt guilty.

 

I’m an emotional person, in case you haven’t noticed. If I had known where Spike’s “place” was I would have run there. I would have run to my mother’s on the second night, just as Mark predicted, but I had a crack crew behind me, yet again. My lawyer told me what to do. My mother and Spike made sure I did it.

 

I wasn’t supposed to do or say anything other than what my lawyer told me. He had papers drawn up, arranging a visitation schedule from day one. I wasn’t to respond to any of Mark or his family’s comments on my mental status. The lawyer was dealing with that. He had interviews for me and Becky scheduled with therapists recognized by the courts. He collected statements from people who knew us. All I had to do was remain cheerful and polite and tell Mark to take it up with my lawyer.

 

That kind of legal assistance doesn’t come cheap. Crack team to the rescue. Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Spike. Spike came up with money, which I felt very mixed about taking because of the weirdness of the situation.

 

The lawyer said he didn’t want to know anything about the boyfriend he suspected existed, but he would regularly tell me what he would advise me to do or not do IF a boyfriend was in the picture. One of those things was to not in any way, shape or form have non-existent boyfriend involved in finances.

 

For the divorce negotiations, I had to keep a detailed list of household expenses from gas money to cotton swabs, to tips for pizza delivery, and so did Mark. Wow, let me tell you THAT is an eye opener. Money gets spent and pissed away on really weird things.

 

One of the most difficult things, during the divorce process, was keeping Becky away from Spike. They were two of the most important people in my life. I couldn’t even talk about Spike with my mother when Becky was around.

 

I recalled Spike’s telling me about the French girl speaking to her children in French, against her husband’s wishes. I felt like her. Now I was not only having to continue to hide the Slayer history but Spike as well. I felt like I was a horrible mother, lying to my little girl for the worst kind of reasons. Once the divorce was over I’d be like, surprise Becky! You have a mother who is totally NOT who you think she is and a sort of step vampire. Becky wasn’t even two, and it didn’t do her any damage, but it was the sort of thing I worried about.

 

It was hard on Spike too. I’m not asking you to feel sorry for him, but not knowing and spending time with Rebecca, who was such a critical part of my life, drove him crazy. He felt like he was being cheated by not being able to see us together, to know us together. It also drove him crazy because, in his mind, Rebecca was his. The idea that Mark might get primary custody made Spike’s blood boil.

 

The lawyer assured me from the start that Mark wasn’t going to get primary custody. I hated how things got, but I was willing to do what it took to hang onto Becky. One of the lawyer’s arguments was precedent. Mark already had one failed marriage behind him, in which he had lost custody of his first child. This man wasn’t good husband OR father material.

 

I felt that was unfair. Mark wasn’t a bad husband, and he was a good father, but I sat there and nodded my head. I had no intention of keeping him from seeing Becky but I forged ahead with whatever the lawyer said as long as it wasn’t illegal or downright dirty dealing.

 

I got to a point when negotiations over the house were getting hot and heavy, of considering offering Mark the house in exchange for primary custody. He could have the house to play with the kids in on his weekends! That was fair right!? OMG, how horrible is that? I wanted to have him sell his kid out for three bedrooms and two and a half baths.

 

The lawyer said “no way” though for different reasons. What we were going to do was win the house, and custody, then put the house up for sale and if Mark wanted to, he could buy it. That seemed way too complicated, but my lawyer assured me that was how it was done.

 

I tried very hard to keep civil with Alice and Dan. I dutifully dropped off Becky for her afternoons with Grandma. Alice didn’t buy me any more scented candles or bubble bath. I think she decided I was using ME time to get with a lover.

 

We continued to argue about the christening. I wanted it in writing that Mark could not get Becky baptized without my written consent. The lawyer said that was going to be a tough one and impossible to enforce. If Mark had the baby baptized what could I do about it? The issues of differing religions is always a sticky one in divorce, but it was one the courts didn’t involve themselves in unless it was proven that the child was in danger.

 

Spike said addressing the christening questions was easy, put a warding spell over Becky that would keep any such ceremony on Mark’s end from taking effect. Basically, the baptism would slide off of her unless he actively did something to address the ward, or unless the baptism was of particularly ritual form. The form used at the church we attended was pretty generic and posed no threat to a strong ward.

 

I took Becky to Spike’s guy and hoped she didn’t say anything to Daiy about it, or about the strange ceremony that took place, or the weird symbol that was put on the back of her head. (good thing she had a full head of hair) Becky wasn’t talking much yet, but she was making fast progress and I never knew what would come out of her mouth. She might have words tomorrow to describe something that happened last week.

 

Spike and I did meet in a time zone of our own. I was afraid it was going to be like that one afternoon, and we would feel all weird about getting together under bizarre and frankly sad circumstances, but we didn’t. We talked on the phone regularly, so getting together to have sex felt like an extension of our relationship, not something desperate. Though it definitely had that forbidden vibe to it and we were sneaking around, we were fairly certain we wouldn’t get caught.

 

Since neither of us was being split into pieces and we were going to the same place, Spike’s guy didn’t need any assistance to put us into another time zone and then zap us back. It was pretty standard sorcerer’s stuff. Spike would show up at the location and basically disappear. I’d show up, and disappear. No one ever saw us together.

 

There was the issue of WHERE to put us, and that gets all kinds of crazy. Basically, Oscar could have put us anywhere reasonably safe, say, where we were unlikely to get hit by traffic. Depending on the time signature he put us into, we might only flicker into sight once every few hours. So maybe someone would get some momentary flash of “what the heck did I just see”, but that would be as much as anyone saw of us.

 

Our bodies, however, would also be out of synch spatially. If we were on a very slow time signature, when we flickered back into this time phase, we might be several yards or more from where we started, because all the things in this world would have moved in space.

 

We had to pick a signature to fit the amount of real time we had, and that would keep us relatively close to a safe home base physically. This was all extremely strange, but not as strange or difficult as the last time I had done it, in three pieces. It was really nice not to be doing it alone, having my best friend (well, maybe second best friend because Spike is amazing but will never trump my mom) along made a huge difference.

 

It was sort of like being in a cloud, where things flashed by periodically, and sounds would turn on and off, but they were from dimensions and time signatures other than our own. Suddenly we would hear a bar of music or voices from somewhere or the smell of food cooking when we would momentarily coincide with some other time phase.

 

I also got a taste of what Spike meant about privacy being an American invention. I learned what it was like to be not so private. It was eye opening to realize just how much other stuff is taking place right where we are and we don’t even know it AND how much we just get used to filtering out.

 

We see and hear things from other time signatures and dimensions when they coincide with ours, but our brains learn to ignore it as so much static.

 

The same thing happened to me after a bit. When Spike and I were in our time zone, at first the static weirded me out and I was like, omg, can they see what we are doing? He said that yeah, if they cared to, or bothered to they could, but like us they were more interested in their own lives and to nearly everyone “out there” we were static their brains would filter out.

 

It’s similar to the way that people’s brains filter out the noise of the train when they live close to the track or the sound of the neighbor’s music or the smell of a factory. Or the fact that your kids are a few feet away while you fight or have sex with your spouse or whatever.

 

It’s only a big deal if you make a big deal out of it and let it be the focus of your attention. I got it then. We live in our own little worlds and only interact when we choose to or are forced to by circumstance. There were some similarities to the custody battle. In the end, was it a huge deal if Becky spent Wednesday evenings at church with her daddy instead of watching TV with me? Only if we made it one.

 

160 years had taught Spike to filter out a lot of static. (and when to tune into it if he wanted to) It was the thing that cemented the understanding that if he waited a beat or three, people and things had a way of working out because they got back into synch with themselves.

 

He said it was one of the things that made him good in bed (brag much?) A lot of it was timing. Don’t rush it and don’t fall behind a beat and throw it all out of synch. He was a master of timing...when he wanted to be. Sometimes he just didn’t give a bloody fuck and did his thing. (but he always made up for it later)

 

I learned a great deal about timing via our supernatural liaisons. I’m not just referring to sex, though I think I got better at that as well. Spike and I didn’t just do the sexy. Sometimes we did a weird, almost tantric, thing. We’d sit either back to back, or face to face with our palms touching, and we’d ride the time signature. The feeling is a little like a tickle, but a tickle that’s all over the place, inside and outside at the same time.

 

It’s not sexual, but it feels sort of like sex because you’re so present. We didn’t see or hear things, but we got the illusion that we did. We were picking up sensations via a part of our being beyond the normal five physical senses. We would find ourselves smiling or laughing or experience heart-stopping awe or terror at the same time without exactly knowing why or what triggered it.

 

My time away with Spike, was truly otherworldly, and for that reason therapeutic. There was all this stuff “out there”, a plethora of Universes and dimensions beyond my custody battle. For nearly everyone and everything that existed, my divorce was less than static. Talk about putting things into perspective

 

“So where did you and Spike go?” My mom would ask me. At first I told her it was private, but eventually, I began to explain things the best I could.

 

“And here I thought you two were just having sex. Silly me.”

 

“There is never JUST anything with him,” I assured her.

 

“Yeah, I guess I kind of knew that, but I didn’t expect you to be tripping on dimensional LSD on your dates.”

 

LSD does involve alternate time signatures, different dimensions, and other sensibilities, so I couldn’t argue that some of our dates weren’t actually drug trips.

 

Spike and my mother sometimes met on their own. (in ordinary time and space) At first, I bugged them to find out what they said about me and was ashamed of myself when Spike told me I was mighty self-centered if I thought that two intelligent people didn’t have anything to say that wasn’t about me. Well, ouch.

 

I was jealous that they had a relationship of their own. I was jealous that my mother got to spend real time with Spike. Our time zone dates were a wacky kind of interesting, but I longed for real time with him, in our world, where things have consequences. Consequences aren’t a bad thing, they are just as likely to be wonderful as not.

 

The things that happened on our dates were out of context. They didn’t amount to much in any dimension, they were just interesting memories and nothing more. I wanted us to have life and memories that added up to something.

 

 

Spike met Rob. Even my mother’s boyfriend spent more time with him than I did.

 

The hangovers from the phase shifts were much less debilitating when I did them all in one piece than when I had been ripped into three parts. The remedy that Spike’s guy had was pretty damn good. It tasted like wintergreen Lifesavers and made me sleep like a rock. “Better than Robitussin and Vodka I’ll wager.” was Spike’s commentary on it.

 

My mental state improved after the separation, and even more so after a few “sessions” tripping the light fantastic with Spike. Mark’s ammunition in that quarter was quickly running out. The fact that apparently, living with him, had been a factor in how messed up I was, was further proof that I was mentally sound once out of that situation.

 

After 8 months of negotiations and hearings, I was awarded primary custody with generous visitation for Mark and no custodial limitations. That meant, that if I wanted to, I could let Mark keep Becky for a month or a year, but I couldn’t keep him from seeing her any less than he was awarded by our custody settlement.

 

I was awarded the house and all equity in the house but to keep it, I had to pay the mortgage. I didn’t want the house and offered it to Mark. He opted to rent a condo. The house was eventually sold and I netted a nice nest egg.

 

According to the custody decree, if I moved in with a partner within 12 months, we could go back to court to duke it out again, pending the suitability of the new member of the household on the child in question.

 

Basically, if I shacked up with Spike before a year was out, we’d go back to court and they’d do a background check on him. Mark or I could, at any time, go back to court if we thought Becky was being endangered, but the automatic rework was only for a year from the date of the divorce.

 

 

I felt numb when I stepped out of the courtroom. As far as divorces went it was standard and fair. I don’t think that after the first two months, Mark really thought he was going to win primary custody, and I don’t know if, by that point, he wanted to. Becky was better off with me than in child care or being taken care of by his mother during the week. Mark recognized that.

 

Of course, Mark wondered how the hell I’d been living, without having a job and he knew that clearly that situation couldn’t continue indefinitely. It came up in court but my lawyer addressed it satisfactorily enough to put it to rest.

 

The divorce took place on a Friday and Becky was with her father for the weekend.

 

I called Spike. He gave me his address. Then there we were, for the first time in a very long time, together in real time.

 

“Can I pour you a drink?” he asked

 

“Got any vodka?”

 

“Yeah, but I’m out of Robitussin. Would you settle for iced tea?”

 

“You hate iced tea.”

 

“But you don’t.”

 

He already had a glass poured for me.

 

He sat down on his couch and pulled my feet into his lap and gave me a foot rub.

 

“William, William, my William,” I said dreamily. “This is really happening.”

 

“Yeah, nice that, eh?”

 

“And so begins my new life. Shouldn’t I feel happy? Or at least happier? Or glad it’s over? Why doesn’t it feel like it’s over?”

 

“It’s like the time signatures Buffy, nothing is ever really over or separate, there is no past and future, just let yourself go and be where you are when you are.”

 

“Kind of like an orgasm.” I realized. “When you don’t want to be anywhere else.”

 

“Kind of like that.” At the mention of orgasms, his hands began to move up my leg. “Haven’t done it in real time for forever. Think you remember how?”

 

“It’s only been a few months. We’ve gone years and we didn’t forget.”

 

“It’s been more than years this time. It’s been lifetimes and eons. You saw it all go by.” Now he was kissing his way up my leg.

 

I sat up. “Do you know what?”

 

He looked up, waiting for me to fill him in. “I really love you.”

 

He crawled up closer to me “My beautiful, beautiful Buffy. I so love you.”

 

We made love for the first time, that wasn’t stolen, uncertain, fleeting or out of context. We were together, by choice, by word and sentiment.

 

I had felt many times that I was Spike’s Buffy, but I don’t think I truly felt he was mine until that evening. We were in his apartment, not depending on hospitality, stolen from or offered by anyone else. We had come together by choice, not circumstance or desperation. Spike wasn’t here trying to save my life, he was here so we could have a life together.

 

I began pulling him into a kiss, an embrace that made me feel as powerful as I ever had in my Slayer days. I literally felt the strength coursing through me, I knew if I held him just a little tighter I would leave bruises. I could be anyone with Spike, anything, any aspect of Buffy. He loved them all and could handle them all.

 

“Oh god Buffy, your body…” he murmured appreciatively. His hands were everywhere kneading my flesh even as he was undressing me. He adored my softer thighs, my fuller breasts, and the rounder hips I was still sporting. I had lost most of the baby weight, but I wasn’t firm and my skin wasn’t taut the way it had been in my Slayer days.

 

I was worried when he’d first come back, that he would find my older, softer body disgusting. I had forgotten who he is, what he is, what he knows. I felt almost like he’d been waiting for this version of me. Using the word ravish sounds dramatic, but it’s what he did when he made love to me then. His hands and mouth were hungry for me, it was like he couldn’t get enough and meant to lose himself in me. He was making up for things denied him for far too long.

 

I wanted possession of his body. I wanted him to feel the way I had since the first time we’d been together, that my mark was on him. I wanted to work him over until every inch of him was familiar territory, and I would know the sight, and smell and taste of it in a way no one else ever had or would.

 

Lying on his couch I felt almost a rage, over the time we had lost together, and that there were still scars on his body I hadn’t traced with my tongue, that there were still parts of him that had been withheld from me. 

 

I wanted to change that in an instant, in one love making session, I wanted to know him and own him more than any woman ever had, more than all the women who had known him put together, ever had. I knew it wasn’t possible, and my heart wept.

 

All he could ever be was here with me now, and me here with him. He was right, he and I had watched eons flash by as we surfed the time signatures.

 

I was crying as he fucked me, tears of frustration. He didn’t let them bother him. He didn’t ask why. He understood I needed to shed them, and left me to it. Asking why would have made it seem as if they were a problem that needed to be solved, something he could help me with. They weren’t. He couldn’t.

 

He couldn’t give me the reassurances I wanted then, on the night of my divorce, but he could love me, and invite me to love him. I made him make love to me over and over again. “Tell me a secret,” I demanded as he plowed into me.

 

“I don’t have any,” he claimed, which seemed ridiculous, of course, he did, we all did. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t tell you if you asked me,” he assured me.

 

“But I don’t know what to ask.” I was still choking on frustration.

 

He laughed at that and stopped his pumping. “Then it’s not me who’s keeping a secret, it’s you keeping them from yourself.”

 

“You would really tell me anything?”

 

“Bout myself, yeah. Won’t share other’s secrets with you, though. You do know the difference.”

 

I wasn’t sure I did. So much of who we are is bound up with other people. Most of our stories evaporate if we start withholding names and dates.

 

Spike pulled out of me and sat up.

 

“What?”

 

“I want you to ask me.”

 

“Ask you what?” Spike often turned the tables on me. He does it to everyone, it’s how he is. I always thought he did it to confuse me, but his tone was sincere.

 

“Ask me anything.” He gave a little laugh. “You think I’m trying to hide from you, I’m not. I love that you’re hungry for me, that you want to know. Ask me anything, Buffy.”

 

We don’t grow if we aren’t challenged. We don’t know who or what we can be unless someone calls that out of us. I had always felt inferior to him, he knew so much more, but there were parts of himself he could not know without me. There were things he could not unlock himself. I could have him in ways no one had ever had him, all I had to do was ask.

 

“Will you stay with me, and raise Becky?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And we’ll be together. For real?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Even when I’m old?”

 

“You’ll never be older than me…”

 

“You know what I mean.”

 

“Yes.”

 

There is was, of all the secrets and mysteries I could have asked him, that was what I most needed to know.

 

“And will you miss me when I’m off on jobs?” he asked. “And cry when we say goodbye?”

 

I always had. “Yes.”

 

“And you won’t argue with me when I know better than you?” I could hear the tease in his voice, but also the fear that I would find him too old fashioned.

 

“Can we agree to disagree?”

 

“We often do.” He reminded me.

 

“And will you believe me when I tell you I love you?” He sounded very serious again.

 

“It’s not that I don’t believe you. I just don’t know what it means.”

 

“I’ve shown you what it means. Over and over. It means this. Us. “ He took my hands and kissed them. “And this.” He wrapped them around his erection. “And you not jumping to conclusions.” He put my palms against his face. “Ask me, don’t think you know what I’m feeling, and thinking.”

 

He’d not only handed himself over to me, he asked me to take good care of him.

 

My hands were there anyway, so I pressed the heels of my palms into his cheeks and he opened his mouth to me. I traced the front and back of every tooth, felt each crevice of every molar, counted the ridges in his palate and tasted forever on his tongue.

 

 

************************************

 

Q&A

What was Spike doing during the past 7 years? Spike needed money. Was he still taking jobs for the Tribunal? Was he just unavailable if Willow asked about him?

Unavailable covered two things. It could mean he was on a job for the Tribunal OR, that he had gone AWOL on them too, and he was off doing his own thing. At any rate, it meant that he didn’t want to be found.

In other words, he could be declared unavailable by the Tribunal, or he could declare it for himself. And, he could declare it officially, or on a more personal level, as in telling Oscar that if someone was looking for him, to cover for him.

Spike had Oscars in many places, and there is a sorcerers network. Spike could keep tabs on things from anywhere and find out if and who was looking for him.

Spike told the Tribunal to keep his status listed as unavailable. He had Oscar keeping tabs on me. He was also well aware that Wendy had standing orders to tell me if/when Spike became available, so when he turned up, it wasn’t a coincidence. He wanted to be found. It was a very clear signal that he was back if and when I wanted him. The ball was in my court.

 

Via Tribunal connections and his own personal connections, Spike can live on the cheap in many places. There is nearly always someone or some place he can put up. But of course, he does need money.

When he takes a job for the Tribunal they cover his expenses. Depending on what the job is, and the deal he makes with them, he may get paid on top of that. They don’t keep him on any retainer or give him any regular living allowance. It’s completely dependent on what he is doing for them at the time.

Most of Spike’s money comes from business deals he arranges himself. Much, if not most of that involves the supernatural.

He also assures me that most business in the world get done over a handshake, a wink and the fact that two people know the same third person, rather than by signing a contract. People still barter, cut deals, pay in cash and turn blind eyes.

He reminds me over and over again how “American” my ideas are and that in general Americans are stupidly naive and idealistic. We believe that we all deserve three solids a day, our own home, privacy, and that most people are “honest”, and that our definition of honesty is like that of a child saying it’s unfair that sister got an extra sprinkle on her ice cream. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is turning the way it always has and people are getting by on their wits without the help of contracts and lawyers.

Then I think about how much more help I received from talking to my mom's group friends and chatting with Kelly and Helen about life, than by paying a professional therapist. I realize that I exchanged babysitting with friends more often than I left Becky in professional daycare and that I saved other worlds and dimensions in supernatural deals bargained in secret meetings, not on the floor of some interdimensional UN. I see his point.

He’s not a criminal. He doesn’t rob banks and steal cars. He likes to say he connects “people” to goods and services for a fee.

Spike has worked for the Council. They pay better than the Tribunal. Spike never has and probably never will have a job with regular hours, a salary, pension plan, and benefits. If he needs money, he goes and finds an opportunity to get some.

 

No on has specifically asked this, but I think it might clear some things up. 

There was a lot. I mean a LOT, a lot, that I didn’t understand about Spike before we got together for good. I always thought of him as nearly a James Bond type character. Mystery man that comes and goes without a word always has money, has beautiful women everywhere and pretty much does as he pleases and gets away with anything.

I believed he lived without commitments, consequences, and conscience. He gives that vibe, because it’s a handy cover, and I fell for it and didn’t look much further. I believed that things didn’t matter to him because he always had time to get over it, or could just move along and quickly find a replacement for anything he’d left behind.

That’s why I called bullshit on him when he told me he hadn’t been able to return to Collinsville. It had never occurred to me that Spike couldn’t go where he wanted, when he wanted or that any of the things that constrain mere mortals like me, applied to him.

When he told me that his paperwork had been pulled, he had no money, or that he’d burned too many bridges by working with us, I thought he was just making excuses to a stupid lovesick girl. It was only after I saw hard evidence of some of those things that I realized that he is NOT untouchable.

That was terrifying to me. When he showed up ill at my mother’s it really wigged me, because even though I felt intimidated by Super Spike, global Playboy, it was also comforting, because it meant nothing really bad would ever happen to him, and there was always the chance he’d look me up if he was in town. Realizing that he was vulnerable shook me, and I resisted believing it. In my head, I made excuses and rationalizations.

Part of me felt safer believing that I was one of the many casual lovers of the vampire 007, even though another part of me wanted to be his one true love. I couldn’t even imagine what that might look like. It made no sense to me and I didn’t believe that Spike would ever want to, or was capable of settling down. It didn’t fit my idea of him.

When I went to England and had Wendy look him up, he showed up almost immediately and told me that things were different because I had come after him. He divulged his true history and identity. That was huge. That was him basically laying it all out at my feet and saying “look, this is who I am, I’ll come to you anywhere, anytime, all you have to do is say so.”

At that time I needed to go to University. I needed to put distance between my Slayer life and the life I was going to lead in the future. I still didn’t believe that Spike ever would or could settle down or that he would want me. I thought all we could ever be was fleeting lovers.

I ignored the stories he’d told me of previous loves in his life, I ignored the clear evidence that I wasn’t just another random pretty face to him. His history intimidated me. He was a world traveler, he’d seen and done it all and I was...a washed up nobody. I couldn’t imagine why he would want to be with me. I didn’t believe a relationship with me had anything to offer him.

The longer I went without seeing him, the more deeply I felt that way.

The reality is that Spike’s existence wasn’t nearly as easy, posh, and carefree as I imagined. His work put him in danger. He regularly found himself in uncomfortable circumstances. Lonely, without shelter, having to survive on his wits. While that’s exciting and on some level, he gets off on it, he also likes regular meals, a comfortable bed, someone to spend time with and love, and someone he doesn’t have to hide his true identity from.

Even though he is a vampire, he still craves a normal life. The same way I loved a lot of things about being the Slayer, but I still wanted a house and children and Sunday dinners with my mom. I couldn’t understand that those things were attractive to him as well.

I was always surprised at how normal it looked when Spike was playing backgammon with Mom, or drinking tea or reading in bed as if that was an anomaly rather than who he is. Then it finally hit me that it looked normal because it was normal. Because it was what he liked doing. He wasn’t always wishing he was somewhere else doing something else. He wasn’t as restless as I imagined.

He DOES love his work and wouldn’t give it up for anything because he would get restless always staying in one place. He’s seen too much to not want to be part of things and there are causes he believes in. He risks his life. He believes there are things worth fighting for and he doesn’t want to sit on the sidelines. He also wants a home and a family and commitments. He says that life with no strings isn’t much of a life at all and that there is something wonderful in that which tugs on his heart.


	27. The One Where Even More Life Happens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look at long-term domestic partnership with a vampire/supernatural spy/stepfather, and the joys of motherhood.

The One Where Even More Life Happens

 

Naive Buffy thought that the hard part was behind me. The fight was won, this was where the fun began. Turns out that things don’t work that way. There’s this thing called propriety, even in our modern age. It’s especially important in the set of people I had chosen to live among. Nice people.

 

It wasn’t nice for me to have a moving truck at the house the morning after the divorce was final. It was nice for me to live in the house with Becky for awhile. People said it was because she “needed to adjust.” To what? Her father hadn’t lived there for ages. (for a two-year-old, 8 months is an age) Mostly it was for appearances, so everyone would see that the divorce was amicable, gentle and with no animosity. I wasn’t supposed to act like I was running to get out of the gate and begin my new life. I wanted nothing more than to shake the dust of this place off my feet, but among nice people, that wasn’t how it was done.

 

I didn’t exactly see why it mattered, but even my friend from moms group assured me that did matter. I had kept way bigger secrets in my life than the fact that I was happy to be divorced and didn’t want to live in that house anymore. I didn’t see what the big deal was.

 

“Just cool your heels, you’ve been through a lot. You don’t need to rush into anything,” claimed my friend.

 

Apparently, I didn’t need to rush into having my boyfriend over at the house either.

 

My mom agreed with that. Spike understood it, but he didn’t much care and was irritated, even though he agreed that it was probably for the best. It was still Becky’s world to a certain degree. Taking it easy made sense, but I didn’t think there was anything easy about it.

 

For Mark’s sake, for Becky’s sake, for stupid annoying Alice’s sake...I had to keep up the story that there hadn’t been another man. I suppose that was probably not a bad thing for my sake either, but seriously was I NEVER going to be able to live with Spike for an extended period of time?

 

“It’s not forever,” my mother told me. Clearly, I was acting like a 14 yr old with a broken heart.

 

“It’s a bit like mourning,” Spike said. “You know, wear black for a year and all that.”

 

“A YEAR? I am not living in that fucking house for a year.”

 

He smiled. He liked when I got all worked up and indignant. “How about we let you off with 90 days for good behavior.”

 

“90 days?” I repeated.

 

“Gives you time to find a place. You can put it on your calendar, even rent the truck if you like, if it will help to count the days down.”

 

“This really does feel like I’m in prison.”

 

“As I recall it was a rather nice looking place, least from the outside,” He noted.

 

I beat my head on the table. Yeah, sure. 90 days.

 

Fuck it all to hell! He’s never been much for propriety, 6 days after the divorce Spike came over. Not to move in mind you, but to have a civil dinner and evening with me and Rebecca.

 

Unlike the last time they met, she was extremely shy, peeking at him from around my legs.

 

I had introduced him as Spike to her when they first, not that she remembered, but now it was personal.

 

“Do you want her to call you William?” I asked.

 

He looked at me, almost shyly and said, “That would be up to you.”

 

I was flustered. “I guess Spike then, but it’s not because, I mean, even my mom calls you Spike.”

 

“It’s fine, Luv. It is my name.”

 

Even I called him Spike in mixed company.

 

“Things are going to be a whole lot of awkward for awhile.” I guessed. Becky was clinging to my leg so tightly, that I was dragging her along as I walked. She didn’t seem to mind.

 

There were no little games between them that night and no singing her to sleep with French lullabies. He had to wait, while I did the bedtime ritual and got her settled. My pretty fantasy of repeating our first idyllic night was blown to pieces.

 

“I thought kids liked you,” I told him when I finally had Becky down for the night.

 

“I never said that.”

 

“Now you tell me.”

 

“You like me, she’ll come around.” He put his arms around me. “Nice night, you have chairs out back?”

 

Of course, we did, Mark and I had been the very image of middle-class comfort. We had a nice patio, comfortable outdoor furniture, and a chimenea.

 

We’d used the chimenea exactly once, the patio more than that but I don’t think in all the time I’d lived in the house, I’d sat outside after dark. Of course, my new partner kept different hours than Mark.

 

We went out back. Spike sat in a chaise lounge and looked at the sky, then around the yard, then at me. I stood there stupidly, with my arms crossed over my chest.

 

“Come on, Luv.” He motioned for me.

 

This was the life. This is what I had wanted, house, yard, kid, patio and I had wanted the vampire lover too, but this was a hell of a weird mash-up.

 

I sat down beside him and listened to the sounds of the neighborhood at night. Home sweet home, far from the fissure, with my little slice of hell by my side.

 

………………………

 

It didn’t take long for Becky to warm up to Spike. It didn’t take long for her to thrill to the idea that he had his own name for her and for her to say “Rebecca!” very clearly and saucily.

 

“I’m going to teach her to play backgammon,” he told me over dishes one evening.

 

“Don’t you think she’s a little young?”

 

“Doesn’t matter, she’ll catch on quick. Be beating you before you know it.”

 

I didn’t doubt that.

 

It wasn’t a secret to me that Spike had to work. He’d disappeared twice during the divorce proceedings. He told me he was leaving, but not where to or for how long. Those would be secrets that involved other people.

 

He swore that he was still not in the good graces of the Tribunal. I was pretty sure he was actually doing work for the Council. He told me he was helping a friend, which was his default explanation for just about everything, his version of my car crash that wasn’t.

 

“Use my place whenever,” he told me. I already had my own key. “If you don’t have a place by the time your 90 days are up, feel free. The lease is paid, keep up the utilities.”

 

“Sounds like you’ll be gone a long time.” That was Buffy speak for “OMG, I’m never going to see you again. am I?”

 

“No longer than I need to be,” he said brightly.

 

“I could meet you somewhere, you know, some other dimension.” He and I had phased shifted several times, but that’s not the same as dimension hopping. We could occasionally see flickers of other dimensions, but we hadn’t actually visited them.

 

“No need. I’m not taking .anything overseas. Not unless I bring you with me. And the little one.”

 

Becky knew that referred to her and she ran over. He swooped her up and my heart leaped at the sight, the same way it always did. I wondered how long it would be before she noticed that he was not like other men. When was she going to ask, “What’s up with the cool pale skin?”

 

It was strange, but when I was getting the house ready to sell, I started to feel nostalgic about it. I noticed that it really was a nice place, a good place to raise a family. It was cute and stylish and it made me sorry all over again that I hadn’t been able to make it work. It would have been nice for this to be Becky’s home for a few years, then to buy a nicer place, with a pool. Becky’s friends could come over to swim. There would be wet footprints on the patio and the kitchen floor.

 

Here I was again, not knowing where I would be in a year, let alone three or five.

 

I had a few friends from moms group over one afternoon. I had decided to show my house off before I sold it. There was also the chance they knew a young family that was looking for a place just like this.

 

The yard looked better with five little kids in it. They were playing on the swing and slide set we’d purchased for Becky before she could even sit up.

 

“Have you started looking for a place?” My closest friend asked me.

 

“God no, trying to get this place ready to sell is a big enough job. I can’t imagine trying to compare school districts and get inspections done now.”

 

“But if you sell?”

 

“I have a place I can go, near my mom’s. A friends place.”

 

“This would be the mysterious boyfriend.”

 

I smiled.

 

“Her old high school sweetheart.” My friend knew it was ok to tell the others, now.

 

I burst into laughter, “Sweetheart?Not hardly.” I was so damn tired of my life of secrets. I told the women how we’d flirted when I was 16 and that when he’d come back through town, he climbed in my window to have sex with me.

 

“OMG Buffy, YOU?”

 

“His nickname is Spike.” I couldn’t stop laughing at the wonderful absurdity.

 

“Your mom let you date this guy?”

 

“No, but he didn’t hang around. He didn’t show up again, till two years later.”

 

“Too late for her to kick his ass.”

 

We had a wonderful, perfect, afternoon swapping stories of high school boyfriends and things we’d done behind our parent’s backs.

 

After they left I was sweeping crumbs into the grass and hosing off spilled punch, when Becky threw herself down on the chaise lounge that Spike liked to sit in at night.

 

“Mom.” Oh god, how I loved that. She’d started using it only recently.

 

“What Baby?” Damn punch stains, you can’t get them out of anything, and the patio had to be spotless now that the house was going up for sale.

 

“When is Spike coming home?”

 

……………………………..

 

I didn’t want to keep all the furniture from the house. I encouraged Mark to take more than he planned and I even gave some to his first ex-wife! I bore no hatred for her.

 

My mother encouraged me not to get rid of too much and told me I could put things in her basement until I found a place. Mostly, I wanted a fresh start. I kept things I had chosen on my own. I promised Becky we’d get her a new bedroom when we moved into our own house. I didn’t tell her our own house was likely to be an apartment.

 

Once the house was on the market, we moved to Spike’s. That way the house was show ready at any time. The agent said having less furniture in there was a plus as people could imagine themselves in it more easily.

 

Spike’s apartment was just barely comfortable, a small step above spartan. He actually likes things very comfortable, but he never intended that place to be “home”, it was just a holding pattern while waiting for better things. I vowed to follow his lead and not make it so comfortable that we were tempted to get entrenched. Having just moved, I didn’t relish doing it again anytime soon, but we couldn’t stay forever in a one bedroom apartment.

 

Becky took to exploring it immediately. She walked around slapping every horizontal surface with the flat of her hand and declaring it either “yes, yes, yes, yes, NO yes, yes NO NO NO.”

 

I mostly agreed with her assessment of his belongings.

 

“Not to put my nose into a place that’s none of my business,” my mother said, when she first visited us at Spike’s apartment, “But what are you going to do about money?”

 

I would be able to pay off the lawyer and a few other lingering bills when the house sold, but obviously, there were no more monthly living expenses paid for by Mark, and child support wasn’t enough for the two of us to live on.

 

“I’m going back to work,” I announced bravely, having absolutely no idea where, how or when, but knowing it was the correct answer.

 

My quick reply and obvious enthusiasm impressed my mother enough to keep her from rolling her eyes, but not quite enough to wipe the skeptical look off her face.

 

“This place is paid up till whenever. I have some wiggle room,” I assured her.

 

That did wipe the skeptical look off her face, but she wasn’t yet beaming with optimism.

 

“So are you thinking house or apartment?” she asked, giving her opinion that Spike’s place wasn’t quite home worthy.

 

“I’d LIKE a house.”

 

“And Spike?”

 

“Would like a house too?” Dammit, that came out sounding way too much like a question. It wasn’t a question. I knew he’d prefer a house, and I knew her actual question was “is he going to show up again before Becky graduates high school?”

 

“I don’t want to sound obtuse Buffy, but can Spike actually pay bills? Does he have any income? Any LEGAL income?”

 

Defining “legal” in the type of work I’d retired from and Spike was still involved in, was dicey. When there are no laws that recognize, let alone govern, the realms you operate in, “legal” is sketchy at best.

 

“He told me he’s been on the up and up.” Which meant he wasn’t eating people. We hadn’t discussed all his professional activities. Oh, the joys of the nontraditional relationship.

 

When the house 4 doors down from my mother went on sale, I teased her that I would buy it and she’d never get rid of us. She didn’t think it was a terrible idea. Neither of us had ever thought we’d be one of those close families that all lived on the same block and were in and out of each other’s houses, but when the opportunity came up, we both kinda liked the idea. Thing was, I couldn’t afford a house like that on any salary I was likely to earn.

 

I got in touch with Spike’s guy, who got in touch with Spike, who called and was dumbstruck when I asked him if he thought we should buy a house near my mom’s.

 

“What’s that again?” He had no idea how quickly an idea can take root in a woman’s mind, and how much faster it can grow when her mother gets involved. I don’t think he’d realized that he now had the status of a married man with a family.

 

Clearly, I was wacked out of my mind, and reacting to the divorce, losing the luxury of a house and the crumbling of my domestic bliss. I wanted to live near my mom and have things be OK again.

 

“A house by my mother’s is on sale. I thought maybe, you know how much Becky loves her Gran Gran and you and my mother get along so well.”

 

“Not that damn cat lady’s place.”

 

“Oh god no, they’ll never get the smell out of there. It’ll have to be condemned. The house four doors down. East of her. Wait, no West, the one with the blue porch.” Which probably meant nothing to him since colors don’t stand out as much in the dark.

 

“Buffy. Are you saying you want me to buy you a house by your mum?” His tone was only a step above condescending and I didn’t like it one bit.

 

“I didn’t say I wanted YOU to buy it for ME.” I was hurt that he hadn’t said for “us”.

 

“Can it wait a bit. I’ll be back in a week, 10 days tops.”

 

He said “back” not “home”. I felt like throwing something.

 

“Yeah, sure. Of course...no rush. Just taking care of business here. Hey, I’m getting a job.” Look at me Ms. Independent!

 

 

I imagined him banging his head with his hand. Seriously, I was acting so wacked right then you would have thought I was pregnant again.

 

I pretended I was just checking out the housing market when I called the realtor asking to see the house. It was perfect. It felt like home. It wasn’t as new as my other house. In style, it was more like my mother’s, but different enough so as not to be creepy or anything.

 

“Do you know if this room gets a lot of morning Sun?” I asked the agent.

 

She wanted to have a ready answer, but of course, she didn’t.

 

“I’d like to come back early, to see,” I informed her.

 

“Sure, how early were you thinking?”

 

“Early early. Maybe 6:30?” The look on her face said that was a tad bit too early. “Or 7, 7 would be fine.”

 

She checked her schedule book. “I can’t make 7 tomorrow.”

 

I’d told myself I had just come to “look”, not to get serious. Asking the agent to meet me there at 7 AM smacked of serious.

 

“You know, maybe not,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. It’s a nice place but I’m not really re-”

 

“You know, I can make it tomorrow after all,” she said chirpily, now that it sounded like she might be losing a customer.

 

“Great!”

 

“Mom can Beck and I stay over so I can take a look at that house in the morning?”

 

“That house?”

 

“I want to see how it is in you know, dawn’s early light.” We shared a conspiratorial look.

 

The master suite was perfectly shaded from early morning Sun, and Becky’s room was nicely lit but looked like it wouldn’t be taking full Sun until late morning at the earliest.

 

Becky and I were asleep when Spike arrived, several nights later. Hr gave me a little shake. “Give a bloke some space, Luv.”

 

I think I squealed, and then I was all up in his face kissing him. “Happy to see me then?” He was already tugging me towards the living room and the couch. No matter what he’d done in the past, I think he realized we were NOT making love on the bed next to my child.

 

He certainly was happy to see me, taste me and test my flexibility. We fell together in a satisfied heap. “You’re very nice to come home to Slayer,” he said, gnawing on my shoulder.

 

He hadn’t called me that in a long time and I smiled. No one had called me that in a long time. I hadn’t been able to acknowledge it for SUCH a long time.

 

Spike slept until nearly 6 PM the next evening. When he woke he asked me if I wouldn’t mind going out for some blood.

 

“I think the butcher’s is closed.”

 

“Blast.” He pulled a pillow over his head.

 

“First thing in the morning,” I promised.

 

“It will have to do.”

 

“Spike…”

 

“Mmphm?”

 

“William.”

 

He pulled the pillow off half way. “What, Luv?”

 

We hadn’t talked about it for ages, and the last time he’d gotten angry with me, but things were different now.

 

“You could bite me.”

 

His hand snaked out from under the pillow and took a firm grip on my arm. “You mean that?”

 

“Yes.” I gulped, a tiny bit less sure than I had been a minute ago. I trusted him, but it was new territory. We hadn’t been there yet.

 

“I appreciate it Buffy, but maybe best not with the little one in the house.” His words sounded formal but his voice was gentle and sincere.

 

“Another time.”

 

“Yeah, but if you don’t mind, some tea would be nice.”

 

A little while later he and Becky were sitting side by side drinking equally weak, milky, sweet tea. She was a tiny bit shy at first, but she warmed up to him again in no time.

 

He drank his tea, it was nearly dark when he looked up tiredly and said. “So what’s this about a house?”

 

It seemed like too much now. Too presumptuous. We hadn’t discussed any of this. We’d spoken about things in a hypothetical way during the divorce process. Someday, when this is behind us. Now it was.

 

 

“It’s just a house is for sale.”

 

“Next thing you’ll be asking me to marry you.” He was stirring his tea furiously, but I could see the smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.

 

“I can’t help it, I’m human, I have to think about these things,” I said in my own defense.

 

“What says you, Miss Rebecca? Have you seen this famous house?”

 

“Mom? Have I seen the frmsss house?”

 

“We could go by there.” I said, still not exactly sure what the status of things with the three of us was.

 

“Best ask your mum as well, in case the two of you don’t convince me.” His smile would best be described as a smirk, by that point.

 

He finished his tea and went to get dressed. I followed him into the bedroom. “We don’t have to. I know you’re tired. And I don’t even know if you want this.”

 

“It’s what’s best, yeah? For you. For our girl.” He pulled out a shirt.

 

“So,this is it. We’re together,” I checked.

 

I couldn’t quite read the look on his face. His eyes got that faraway look, like they were reaching back through the years, over the many places he’d lived and all the things he’d done.

 

“I meant what I said, Buffy.” He was looking at me with his black timeless eyes. “I don’t do things halfway. You can’t do like you did with Mark. Tell me now if you’ve changed your mind.”

 

That was the most scared I’ve ever been of him. I felt a flash of terror that I might be making a pact with the devil himself.

 

“Will you leave again?”

 

“Like I just did, yeah. Don’t plan to stay away, not long. I never did stay away for me Buffy. I stayed away for you, so you could do what you wanted, what you needed. But yeah, I have my work.”

 

“I can’t pay for this house.” The words just came out.

 

“So it would be an arrangement then,” he said, arms out, backing me up to the wall. “I quite like the sound of that. I pay the bills, you do what you’re told.”

 

We were eye to eye, then his eyes shifted and he looked me up and down, inspecting the merchandise one last time. “I love you, Buffy.”

 

“And the Slayer claims one more vampire.” I smiled up at him.

He finished dressing and we went out into the night.

 

“Of course you have to see it in daylight,” I said stupidly when we got to the house.

 

Spike stood back, looking at the porch, the trees, the roof. He cocked his head and walked around the side of the house. A minute later a light went on upstairs, then downstairs, then the door opened.

 

“How’d you do that? No invite?”

 

“No one lives here. Squatters rights, even vampires have them.” He stepped out onto the porch and bowed to Becky and I. “After you.” He ushered us in.

 

Becky was too young to think much about how Spike must have climbed onto the roof and let us into a stranger’s house. She just looked up at the two of us for permission before running off to explore, her feet pounding on the hardwood floors, the sound echoing off the walls.

 

She waited for Spike to walk into each room in turn, and put on the light. We walked through, barely speaking. I watched his face for reactions, I remembered the way Mark had sized up each place we looked at, tallying costs, and repairs, and possible renovations for the future.

 

When we got to the master bedroom Spike eyed the windows. “They don’t get early morning Sun, I checked,” I said hurriedly.

 

“Gotta give credit to a girl who’s done her homework.” He was impressed. “What else you got?”

 

I reached into my back pocket. “I have that sheet the agent gave me, all the statistics, house taxes, heating bills, how new the roof is….”

 

“A bit expensive, how picky are you about where the money comes from?”

 

“Will people die?”

 

“No. But I might borrow things that don’t belong to me, from other dimensions.” He eyed the ceilings as we walked down the hall, towards the stairs.

 

“So have you got the paperwork started?” he asked me, assuming that I knew he’d say yes. I had been wrong about him. He knew exactly how fast and hard an idea can take hold in a woman’s mind.

 

“You should see it during the day, and we have to hire an inspector.” I was trying to swallow down my enthusiasm and act rationally.

 

“Yeah, that day bit might be a problem. Take your mum, and Rebecca, make sure she likes her room and the yard.”

 

We walked down the street to my mom’s and she welcomed Spike “home”. I talked too fast and too loud about the house. Spike left my mother and I talking in the kitchen and went to sleep on the couch. When I thought to go and look for him, Becky was sitting on the floor playing with the backgammon chips and had made a line of them down his chest.

 

“Spike’s asleep,” she informed me.

 

My mother shook her head, but fondly. “Picture of domestic bliss.”

 

………………………….

 

“Well, technically you can’t live there, not for another 5 months.” I reminded Spike the next morning. I had picked up blood for him at the butcher's as soon as it opened. He downed one tall glass in a single chug and was starting on his second when Becky came in.

 

“Your mum is telling me I can’t live in your nice new house. How is that for gratitude?”

 

“Whatcha drinking?”

 

Immediately my mind went racing to think of an answer, fruit punch, strawberry juice….

 

“Blood. You want some?” He held the glass to her.

 

“Spike!”

 

“Won’t hurt her. People use it for food all over the world. They sell it at the damn butcher’s.”

 

She watched us go back and forth. She eyed the glass then sniffed it. I watched her in horror, afraid she’d stick her finger in it and taste it.

 

She thought the better of it or was simply scared off by my expression.

 

“Hard to believe your mum is squeamish.” He cut me a glance as he drained his glass. Now that he was filled up he’d be that much more of a handful to deal with.

 

It was a test. He wanted to know if I was planning to make an issue of him drinking blood in his own house. He wasn’t Mark. He wasn’t going to want to keep reminding me of that.

 

Strangely, my mother never said much in the way of “Buffy, do you know what you are doing?” when it came to moving in with Spike. It wasn’t going to be easy, and the idea of it was basically insane. She either figured it was too late to talk any sense into me or that it had at least as good a shot at working out as things had with Mark.

 

Spike left again soon for work. He told me he didn’t see how it much mattered since we couldn’t live together anyway. He was just being sulky and secretive about whatever it was he was doing. I decided to just be happy about the house, and not make an issue of it. He was home in two weeks.

 

Moving day was fast approaching. Mark was to take Becky for a long weekend. As soon as he came to get her, she began chattering to him about her new bedroom, and the yard with bricks and trees and how close it was to Gran Gran’s. I knew Spike’s name or at the very least, his presence would be bound to come up soon. Becky was a chatterbox and I anticipated some interesting inquiries from my ex-husband when he dropped Becky off at the new house on Monday evening.

 

I thought of all the things Jackson had told us, in his oblivious way, about what went on at Mark’s ex’s. Kids just talk as if it’s all a matter of course. Life was going to get very interesting.

 

Life DID get very interesting, and I did a lot of kicking myself, over the next few months. You’d think I would have known, having been a stepmother myself, the kind of issues that were bound to come up.

 

I was arranging dishware in the cabinets when I heard a raised voice in the living room. “Rebecca, pick that up.” Spike’s voice, stern, and commanding.

 

She didn’t respond with words, but from what I heard next, I gathered she had responded by dropping another of whatever it was, on the floor.

 

“NO. Pick it up. Now, both of them.”

 

Another sound of something dropping. She was playing a game of Poke the Vampire. I heard him get up, his feet moving on the wood floor, and I was suddenly terrified. What was he going to do?

 

Of course, she was going to test him. She was a normal three-year-old and did normal, sometimes naughty, three-year-old things, and of course, Spike was going to discipline her. Why hadn’t I thought of that? 

 

It was going happen at Mark’s too when he had another woman in his life. Someone else would be disciplining my child. Someone who wasn’t me. There would be times when Spike would be here alone with Becky...I felt the sudden panic “what have I done.”

 

I hurried into the living room. “Is everything OK?”

 

They both looked up, startled by my tone. Spike had his hand around her wrist and she was stooping to pick up the chunky books that I had heard her drop a minute before. I tried to evaluate the scene.

 

“Come on Beck’s, pick them up. We should put a shelf down here for her books,” I said to Spike. That wasn’t the issue and we both knew it. We couldn’t foresee everything that would come up. We couldn’t avoid all conflict and confrontation.

 

Spike adored Becky, but he was also strict. I hadn’t much thought about it before. You might think a man with no conscience, who would try anything at least once, might be lax, but he wasn’t. Not at all. He was strict about respect and not messing with things that did not belong to you and keeping the house neat and organized.

 

He often told Becky to apologize to him, me or my mother for using a particular tone of voice or “smart talk” as he called it. He would call for quiet time and send her to her room if she didn’t comply. It was automatic. He never asked for my opinion or apologized for being stern with her.

 

He expected to be respected in his own home and would see to it that he was. He was stern, but not mean or unfair. Rebecca loved him very much, but the first several months in the house together were a learning experience.

 

At first, when he spoke to Becky, he referred to me as “your mother” but in time he referred to me as mom or mommy when he wasn’t remembering to be formal, or when he was actively being playful. What Becky should call him, was trickier.

 

My mother always referred to him as Spike. At home, I often called him Will or William when he and I were speaking to each other. So I might yell “Spike, time for dinner”, but when we were lounging on the couch I’d call him William.

 

One day at my mother’s house, when all us grown-ups were chatting, Becky walked into the room and wanting Spike’s attention, shouted “Spilliam!”

 

The three of us all looked at her in shock, and my mother and I rolled with laughter. Spike gave both of us a stern look and went to Becky and asked her quite formally, “What can I do for you?”

 

Under the assumption that we were laughing at him, she put her arms round him and said “it’s OK, I like you, SpikeWilliam”

 

After that, my mother would sometimes tease him with SpikeWilliam, which does have a nice ring to it. It didn’t solve the issue around the house or when she went to her father’s and talked about SpikeWilliam.

 

Jackson had always called me Buffy. Mark had wanted us to find a better term. Buffy sounded too flip and young coming from the mouth of a little boy, but we never settled on anything better. Nothing sounded quite right. We were certainly experiencing that in our house. Even as I was in the midst of consciously finding a fitting term, my subconscious kicked in.

 

Spike was upstairs putting up fixtures for window blinds and needed the tape measure. I handed it to Becky and said: “Hurry, take this up to daddy.” She was out of the room by the time I realized what I had said. I bit my lip and listened to hear what was going to come out of her mouth when she got to him.

 

“Here Spike” was all she said and I felt like I’d dodged a bullet.

 

 

They had a bedtime ritual. Becky would get ready for bed, and present herself to us in her pajamas, teeth brushed, face washed. He’d nod approval and send her off to bed and in a few minutes go and tuck her in with hugs and kisses. They always finished formally. That night when he said, “Goodnight Rebecca.” Becky responded, “Goodnight Spike...daddy.”

 

You could have heard a pin drop. I gave him a minute to get over himself, but he didn’t. He stood there, his eyes going that depthless black as if he was suddenly standing in the fullness of all his years at once. I’ve rarely seen him without an easy response. He looked to me for an idea of what to do.

 

SpikeWilliam has a sort of ring to it but Spike Daddy sounded like a name out of a bad 50’s musical. I would have laughed out loud had the issue not been so damned serious.

 

He ran a hand over her hair and said “Good night, darling girl”.

 

Once we were downstairs I tugged on his shirt tail and teased him “Hey, Spike Daddy.” I wriggled myself up against him.

 

“Shut it.” He glowered at me with his, oh so terrifying, lowered brow. “We are going to have to...address it.” He ran his hand through his hair, totally flummoxed (another great Spike word)

 

For a time, Alice had tried to get Jackson to call me Mama Buffy, which wasn’t really THAT bad, but Papa Spike was pretty weird and would have made him sound more like a grandfather and less like a step vampire.

 

“I don’t reckon Mark would like his little girl referring to another man as daddy. I know I wouldn’t.” Spike rarely showed thought or compassion towards Mark. The way he saw it, there had been a fair fight and I had won, and therefore HE had won as well.

 

“You’ve had children before.” I assumed. I knew he had, in a loose manner. I also knew he had never lived with a woman and her children in quite the way he was with Becky and me.

 

“Of a kind.” He shrugged and gave a scowl. “They called me Father.”

 

That would sound the most reasonable, given their semi-formal manner of speaking to each other. Rebecca. Father.

 

“She could call you Father William,” I offered half-heartedly. To this, he roared. I had no idea why he found it so funny till he recited a poem to me, British of course, and told me that Father William was a fat old fool.

 

“Of all the ridiculous situations.” He shook his head wearily.

 

“Haven’t dealt with this one before? I didn’t think I’d ever stump you.” I admit I was pleased.

 

“You have from the minute I laid eyes on you, Buffy. Haven’t been able to think straight since.”

 

I’m pretty sure my heart stopped beating for a minute. That was quite a confession from such an old and experienced vampire, but he hadn’t said it like a confession. He hadn’t spoken as if it was anything he’d tried to hide or cared to hide, it was just a fact of life he’d learned to live with.

 

We decided to let the issue sit for awhile and Becky referred to him varyingly as Spike, William, and daddy depending on her mood and the circumstance. She tended to refer to him Spike to my mother, Daddy to his face and SpikeWilliam to me.

 

We taught her to refer to him as William to those who were not members of the family, which included her father. We knew it wouldn’t be perfect, and surely there were times when she talked to her father and referred to Spike as Daddy, but such are the issues of blended families in modern times.

 

It took a long time for Spike to get used to being called “Daddy”. He tended to look alarmed when she called him that and came close, several times, to asking her not to. I think sometimes she did it to bug him, knowing it made him uncomfortable. She would talk to him using the term Daddy every third word or so until he told her to stop, or, if he was truly irritated, sent her to her room. I asked her why she did it, and she would play dumb or say she just wanted to make him laugh.

 

He grew used to it, and she stopped saying it to tease him, but sometimes when they were just talking or playing a game she would refer to him, in a nearly formal manner and sounding very British, as SpikeWilliam. It was his favorite. Indeed, it suited him. 

********************


	28. The One Where Push Comes to Shove

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Supernatural demands push Buffy's mundane life to the limit. She may no longer be the Slayer, but Spike is still in the game.

The One Where Push Comes to Shove

 

 

Becky started pre-school and I got a job. My mother had a friend whose company needed someone part time, and there I was with bills to pay. I worked as a vendor, which means I went to stores that sold my company’s product and filled and straightened displays, took orders and talked to the store owners about our new products. It was a little like my job at the car dealership in that the duties were varied. I liked it. I got to drive around and meet people, and feel important in my little Universe where I was the spokesperson for our quality yet affordable product.

 

Dawn got married and divorced all within 6 months, my mother and I never met the man at all. My father had two small tumors removed from his lung.

 

My mother turned down her boyfriends’s marriage proposal and wondered why he had gone and ruined the good thing they’d had going for a few years. She had told him she didn’t care to get married but he’d pressed anyway. She said he just wanted to make sure someone would be there to take care of him in his old age, and that she might have been happy to if it hadn’t required a tiny handcuff on her finger. I promised her I’d take care of her, no ring required.

 

Life with kids is always surprising. Becky came home from school and asked if SpikeWilliam was her real daddy or her pretend daddy. I explained the terms birth father and stepfather. At some point, the question of whether or not Spike and I were married came home from school.

 

She asked if Spike was my boyfriend. The term “boyfriend”, for someone who was 150 years old, seemed bizarre. If you knew Spike, you’d know how even more bizarre it was. He told Rebecca that I was his consort. That term made a wacky kind of sense but none of the kids at school understood it, they thought she said concert. The teacher figured out the word Becky was using but I’m pretty sure in her mind she was thinking “kept woman”, which wasn’t entirely untrue.

 

Spike taught Becky all kinds of wacky tricks and rhymes for counting, telling time, remembering the months of the year, and counting to 1023 using only two hands. Living with her was like a trip down memory lane for him. She was constantly saying things, doing things or bringing things home from school that brought back a memory or story. Having lived as many lifetimes as he had, he always had more and usually better, stories than I did.

 

Becky asked questions about why Spike never went out in the Sun, why he drank blood, why his skin was cool, and why he sounded different than the people around her. She wanted to know what the French names he had for me meant and what the various phrases from Italian, Portuguese, and Mandarin referred to….as well as some of the more colorful sounds he borrowed from demon languages.

 

She wanted to know what he did for a living, and he told her he was an emissary, which she decided was the same as a spy and she told everyone she knew that her step-William was a spy.

 

Spike came and went on assignments. He was rarely gone longer than 6 weeks, then one day, when Becky was six, he came to me and told me he was going and didn’t know when (at least he didn’t say “if”) he’d be back.

 

“It’s bad,” he said.

 

“How bad?”

 

“Ovid bad.”

 

“Are you saving another Slayer?”

 

He looked at me strangely, half wondering if I was being nasty and jealous or if I was really asking after the nature of his mission.

 

“I mean does it involve the Council,” I corrected myself.

 

“Yes,” he said, still looking at me cautiously. He didn’t believe that I was “just asking”.

 

I didn’t worry about him being with other women when he went on his short trips. He loved me and knew I wouldn’t like it. But...I also knew how he gets, and when his trips kept him away longer than a few weeks, it churned in my stomach. He didn’t like to sleep alone, and I knew that he found the concept of chastity and fidelity pointless.

 

I even understood that IF (because I wasn’t sure he did) he slept with other women when he was away, it wasn’t a threat to our relationship. He WOULD come home because he loved me and wanted the life we had together. I think after all the years he’d been around and all the women he’d slept with, finding someone to have sex with when he was traveling, was more like going out to eat than an emotional experience.

 

Spike and I had connected emotionally from early on, but I had been right about one thing, Spike doesn’t fall in love easily or often. Maybe that’s another result of living so long. He knows what deep true love is, and what’s lust, or a passing fancy. Spike loved me in a way he was unlikely to find with anyone else, on a few weeks jaunt, to wherever it was duty called him.

 

Once upon a while ago, I had been his girl in a port. I suspected there were women all over the world, who were as overjoyed, when he blew into town, as I ever had been.

 

I’d brought it up early on, asking him outright if he was going to be with other women while he was away from me.

 

“Buffy, don’t start this,” was his first reaction.

 

Which of course, I took as a “yes”.

 

“I am what I am.” Well, isn’t that convenient? I suppose coming from a mortal man it would have been a line he used hoping that brutal honesty would earn him wiggle room. For Spike it was different. It had been his modus operandi for over a century. He loved me and had decided to play house with Becky and me, but that didn’t consume all of who and what he was.

 

“You wouldn’t like if I slept with other men while you were gone.”

 

“Neither would you. I’d have to kill them when I got back and you’d feel responsible.”

 

He wasn’t kidding either.

 

Telling him he was sexist didn’t phase him. Well yeah, of course, he was, what else was new?

 

Telling him that it made me feel insecure, DID phase him.That statement said nothing about his behavior or choices. It was me telling him how I felt, not telling him he needed to alter who or what he was. I don’t know if he always stayed faithful after that, but I had definitely gotten wheels turning in his mind.

 

Quite often, when he came home, the things he said to me upon his arrival, implied that he’d gone without female company. I didn’t ask him outright because I knew he would tell me the truth. My truth was that if he had other lovers, I would still want to be with him, so why torture myself? I had decided it was better not to know, but this time he anticipated being gone a LONG time. Too long to make many promises. Too long for me to be hanging around feeling insecure.

 

“Should I wait for you?” That wrapped up a whole heaping lot of questions into a few words.

 

“Are you asking if I’m coming home?” He couldn’t believe I would even consider such a thing, and that I believed him capable of forgetting about us. “Do you know the last time someone laughed at me and got away with it, before you and the Little One?” Rhetorical question, meaning that we were the exception to every rule, or lack of rule, in his unlife.

 

“Don’t you know I’d take you with me if I could? You and me all over the blasted world fighting side by side.” He looked like he was seeing it in his mind like he’d imagined it many, many times. “I’m selfish enough I’ve thought about turning you so I could take you with me. So we could be together…” He didn’t say “forever”. He knew too much. He’d seen hundreds of vampires turn to dust. Their unlife expectancy was shockingly short.

 

“I’m not the Slayer anymore.” I was stating my insecurities, more than the obvious.

 

“You’re better,” he said emphatically. “You lived to tell about it. You have a bigger heart. You understand things no young girl ever can. Strong and fast with the nature of a mother bear. You have more to fight for now than ever.

 

“They pick young girls who are too ignorant to care about the right things, who will do what they’re told. Takes seeing life to know if it’s worth dying for, to know what you’re protecting.”

 

His words were both warming me and terrifying me. Was it possible that there were things I was good at, beyond being “World’s Best Mom” like it said on the mug Becky had brought home from school?

 

“The Council has never stopped wanting you. You know it.”

 

They didn’t exactly badger me, but anytime I spoke to someone who worked for them, they asked when I was coming back and had I had enough of retirement yet.

 

“You know your super strength wasn’t what made you a great Slayer. It was having the heart and brains to use it. And a sense of humor,” he added with a smile.

 

“And a vampire who had my back.”

 

“You made a vampire want to have your back. That’s no small feat. People love you, what’s more, you love them back. If you think that’s not a super power…”

 

This wasn’t making me feel any better about his leaving.

 

“Don’t ask me for things you know I can’t give you.” His tone sounded more tired than exasperated.

 

Why shouldn’t I? He’d already given me things I knew were impossible. He made his eyes go dark and ageless, knowing how it throws me off guard. He wanted me to try to see things from his perspective. This was no longer about him having lovers while he traveled, that was incidental. When he was out there, he couldn’t operate in the same mindset as when he was home doing chores. He needed me to remember, just how big “out there” really was, and what it was like to be in a reality where our rules didn’t apply.

 

My years as a Slayer had opened my eyes to a world most mortals couldn’t even dream of. My jaunts with Spike, via phase shifting, hadn’t just been some weird temporal honeymoon, it had exposed me to more possibilities, more realities, more strategies, just more of everything. It’s true that having a partner who is a vampire puts limits on some things, but it had also opened up so many possibilities.

 

Every single experience I had ever had, just gave me more to work with. The same it had with him, over all those decades. I could apply it as needed to real life or beyond. Denying who I was had taken its toll on my real life. He had taught me that I could bring my Slayer self to the role of being a mother, a daughter, and essentially, his wife. Now he was telling me that being a mommy made me better and stronger and more willing to do what had to be done. Like this. Like letting him go do what he needed to do because he was who he was.

 

“So, do I have right of refusal? If I say no, you won’t go?”

 

He looked at me with his black, black eyes. It wasn’t a job he was taking this time. He wasn’t doing this for money or adventure. He needed me to understand that he couldn’t say “no”.

 

“So,” I said, making my voice all chirpy, grasping my hands together and rocking on my heels. “When can I expect you?”

 

“Hopefully before she’s too old to call me daddy.”

 

“You hate when she calls you daddy.”

 

“Sure, but I like that she wants to do it.” He made it sound like I should have already known that.

 

When we went to bed that night I pouted. “I hate goodbye sex.”

 

“You know, every time is just a phase shift.” thrust thrust, nibble on my ear a little

 

“Go on.” I assumed he had a point.

 

“So this…” ow dude, that was a bit more enthusiastic than necessary. “Is just you and me flickering through another damn time signature--just flickering very, very slowly.” He demonstrated that slow part quite effectively.

 

“This isn’t goodbye sex any more than any other time. We always come round again, yeah? We will always come round again.” His use of the word “come” was putting ideas into my head, and other parts.

 

“You’re just spouting bull shit, trying to make me feel better.” He was doing very well on the feeling better part. I was tempted to set my pouting aside for a little while.

 

“What’s it going to take to make you quit talking?” He had the capacity for romance, but he wasn’t overly inclined to use it in bed.

 

I stopped moving. Stopped responding.

 

“On lord.” He knew what was coming next was going to be a doozy.

 

“I want you to do something.” I heard him sigh with relief. After all, asking him to do something in bed was usually a good thing for both of us. I wiggled free of him and he let me go.

 

I sat up on my knees and faced him. “I want you to feed off me.”

 

It was too dark for me to see his eyes, but I could imagine how they looked. This was something we’d danced around before and he always shut me down. Yes, he nibbled on my earlobes and shoulders (he’s never gotten over his fascination with biting my shoulders. I can’t wear tank tops anymore, the hickeys and bruises are very unbecoming), but he had never actually bit me to draw blood.

 

“Why?” He COULD see my eyes, and he knew that what I was asking, was different from the times before.

 

“I want to be inside you, the way you’re inside me. I can’t go and fight whatever this is, with you, but you can take some of my strength. I do have that. It’s what I can give you, and I’ll know that I’m with you, IN you.” He understood about wanting to be in someone. It was about power and possession.

 

He took my hands in his face and kissed me, which I knew was a “yes”, but he needed a minute to get over himself.

 

“Well, then, let’s do this right.” His voice held more resignation than anticipation at that point, but he would get past that. He always sounded more like an engineer faced with a problem, than a lover, until he worked out the mechanics of what he was going to do next.

 

Is this too much information, if I tell you how he did it? Probably, but hey, that hasn’t stopped me yet. I knelt up, held onto the headboard. (OMG, I totally didn’t tell you how weirdly we had to set up our bedroom so he could do his left side towards the door thing. I had forgotten to take that into consideration when we were looking at the house.)

 

Anyway, I was kneeling, holding onto the headboard, and he was kneeling behind me, and you know, he was inside me, nuzzling my neck and stuff, so of course I thought he was just going to tip my head and bite my neck, right?

 

Well, when it comes to Spike, expect the unexpected. He was making love to me and it was all very nice, and then in a millisecond he’d snaked his arms around me, turned me around, pushed me down, and bit down on the inside of my upper arm. It hurt. So did his hands, which were holding me so tight that his fingerprints AND the bottoms of his palms left bruises.

 

He had my arm up over my head and all his weight on me, holding me down. He kept thrusting over the skin of my stomach and sucking blood until he came. Then, he nipped his way down, passed over my armpit, gnawed on the side of my breast for a minute, rolled onto his back and sighed.

 

“Ow,” I said.

 

“What the fuck did you expect?” He half laughed at me.

 

“I think I’m bleeding all over your pillow.”

 

He leaned over the side of the bed, grabbed his t-shirt and tied it around my arm. That was our bonding moment. “Didn’t think you’d want me to go for the neck. Harder to explain.”

 

Yeah, and it’s probably best to keep the jugular intact, seeing as I wasn’t keen on dying.

 

“So?” I asked.

 

“I was about to say the same thing.” He gave a chuckle. I had thought my “ow” had covered that.

 

He slipped his arms around me and pulled me up on top of his chest. “Buffy, Luv, I think you've ruined me for all other...fucking hell...maybe everything.”

 

“Mission accomplished.” Hell yeah, baby!

 

Spike usually went to bed with me, then woke up a bit later and did...whatever...read, straighten up, go for a walk...then he’d sleep part of the day while I was at work and Becky was at school.

 

When I woke up, he was up and about, putting a few things into his blood stained pillow case. “I’m leaving the clean one for you,” he said with a hint of a smile. He had a travel bag, but he’d keep my pillowcase inside it, for old times sake.

 

At breakfast, (he didn’t need blood that morning) he told Rebecca he was going away for work.

 

“Maybe I should call you SpyWilliam.” She said it in a serious tone, but we knew she was teasing. She could tell he was more somber than usual when heading out on a job. Usually, he was quite happy about it.

 

“Maybe you should say goodbye to me right and proper and mind your mother and grandmother while I’m gone.”

 

His tone worried her.

 

She abandoned her toast and jam to hug him tightly. He picked her up and kissed her cheek, and smiled at me over her shoulder. He set her back down then he kissed me. Like he REALLY kissed me, which was something he never did in front of anyone, not my mother, or Becky, or anyone...ever. Both Becky and I were shocked and sobered.

 

He had warned me that while he was gone it was possible, even likely, that money would stop coming in. I was still getting child support, but there was the mortgage, and the car payment, and the 1001 expenses that had to be paid.

 

He told me to put groceries, clothing, etc on a credit card, and if he could pay on it he would, and if he couldn’t then it would have to add up until he could. There didn’t seem to be any other way.

 

It was hard going at work that week, my arm hurt like hell. Of course I checked with Oscar, almost immediately, on Spike’s status, and of course, it was “unavailable”.

 

With the nature of my job, I could work pretty much as many hours as I wanted to. If I found us new clients and created more work, I could serve their stores and earn myself a bonus to boot. I also filled in for other vendors on our team when they had vacation time. I was able to bring in more money. I worked as many hours as I could, while still maintaining Becky’s schedule.

 

She had full days of school now, and I put her in an after school gymnastics program three days a week. The cost of the program ate up some of the extra money, but she loved it.

 

We got used to Spike being gone, which isn’t to say we didn’t miss him, but we adjusted. It’s human nature. Unless you actively nurse missing someone, the day to day gets easier. There were moments where his being gone, and worse, his status as “unavailable”, ripped into me. On days when I was preoccupied with his absence, I was short tempered and surly. There were days I wanted to tear out my hair and punch holes in the walls. I was still plenty strong enough to do that.

 

Seeing how much Becky enjoyed doing her gymnastics, made me itchy to get into it. I hadn’t enjoyed martial arts, but flipping around, jumping saddle horses and walking balance beams suited me to a T. I talked to the teachers there and found time to attend open gym. Eventually, I was part time coaching the 9-11 yr olds. Becky didn’t like that I wasn’t HER teacher, but she had to get over it.

 

Spike was right. I was strong, smart, determined and had a sense of humor. I had to find creative ways to address problems, like living without him, lacking income, and dealing with a cranky young daughter who became mouthy and disrespectful. She’d picked up new words and attitudes at school and tried them out at home. Sometimes I’d hear Spike’s admonishments coming out of my mouth and both she and I were surprised that I didn’t say them with his accent.

 

When I went to the parent-teacher conference, I was shocked when the teacher told me that Becky had told everyone at school to call her Rebecca! She hadn’t said a word about it at home. She was fine with me calling her Becky, but I noticed she had been referring to Spike as “Daddy” more often when she talked about him. Sometimes she’d call him Daddy Spike (thank goodness NEVER Spike Daddy again) to delineate him from her Real Daddy.

 

Mark didn’t marry again, which surprised me. I figured he would have a new wife within a year or two of our divorce. A handsome pleasant man like him, a good daddy with a nice income, was quite a catch. On the other hand, he did have the baggage of two ex-wives, two child support bills and he probably WAS jaded on marriage at least a little bit.

 

I assume he had Becky baptized. She went to Sunday school the weekends she was with Daddy, and it didn’t bother me. Mark had every right to be fully who HE was with Becky as well, and teach her what he believed. As I grew more confident in myself, I felt less threatened by those things.

 

Spike had meant what he said about Becky growing up knowing I was the Slayer. It was never anything we sat down and had “a talk” about. She absorbed it like air, just like he said. We hadn’t used the word “vampire” to describe Spike. There was so much inaccurate mythology attached to the term, it felt too early to address it, but one day after watching something on TV, she pieced things together. She asked me if SpikeWilliam was a vampire.

 

I had to think a minute what to say. He said never to lie to her, but was it time? Was this the way it should happen? She sees some show on TV and then there is the great revelation? But life happens where and when it happens.

 

“Yes, he is.”

 

“Why didn’t you kill him?” I guess she truly had absorbed what being the Slayer meant.

 

“Because,” saying he was a good vampire would be a lie if I meant it in a “now he’s a good guy” sort of way. “We love each other and he saved my life, and I trust him.”

 

She wanted to hear the story again of how he saved me, with more detail now, and with a new level of understanding. At the age of seven, she couldn’t understand Ovid or how something could be altered to the point where it seemed never to have existed at all. She was impressed knowing I’d had a piece of the cross of Jesus, no matter how tiny. I showed her the scar on my shoulder where the tracer had been dug out. She’d seen it a hundred times before but wanted to see it again, now that it was part of the story.

 

Becky knew that she shouldn’t tell anyone that her daddy was a vampire. She knew it was likely to raise eyebrows. Maybe she was afraid it would bring on angry mobs with torches and pitchforks like in the movies. Maybe she said nothing because it was her precious secret, and she knew that if he got out of hand, mommy would dust him.

 

She didn’t hesitate to talk to Gran Gran about it.

 

“SpikeWilliam is a vampire. That’s why he never goes out in the Sun,” she told my mom over dinner one evening.

 

“Yes, it explains a lot doesn’t it Beck.”

 

“He saved Mom’s life.”

 

“Sort of,” I said. It was way more complicated than that, but that was the salient part she took from the story.

 

“I’m surprised you told her, him being gone. Seems like something the two of you would have done together,” Mom said, right in front of Becky.

 

“It’s not a secret, not to her anyway.”

 

“And when she tells someone?”

 

“Who’s going to believe it?”

 

“I’m not going to tell anyone. They’d try to kill him.” She thought the two of us were incredibly stupid.

 

It opened a floodgate, and for a while, she was asking questions every day about one thing or another related to vampires and Slayers. She asked if SpikeWilliam killed people and I told her that I knew he had, once upon a time, when times were different. Of course, times were never SO different that it was ok to snack on people.

 

“I can’t talk about that Becky,” I told her. I couldn’t. That was as true as any of the rest of it. I could tell her my part in his story. If someone was going to explain his past, it was going to be him.

 

I began to seriously worry about Spike’s safety when the money stopped coming in entirely. A period of three months passed that he hadn’t paid on the credit card. Even though we hadn’t been in touch via phone, seeing payments being made was proof he was alive, well and likely wheeling and dealing. When the payments stopped, my heart stopped too. I wondered if the “Tribunal” had me listed as Spike’s next of kin. If he got dusted somewhere, how would I know? It wasn’t a given that whoever ended him would report it. He wasn’t like a soldier in a regular army.

 

Of course, when he stopped paying the credit card, I had to. When I got to a place where I was only able to pay the minimum balance, I kicked myself for getting to a situation where I depended that heavily on a creature, who by nature, was undependable. I felt immediately guilty for even thinking that. Spike had proven to be remarkably dependable, but I didn’t have an insurance policy on him and he was subject to melting, dusting and spontaneous combustion.

 

When money got beyond, “tight”, we ate over at my mom’s more often. I was already taking hand me downs from other moms for Becky’s wardrobe, and hitting up resale shops for mine. I stubbornly kept her in gymnastics. It was a symbol to me that I hadn’t given up hope. She stayed with my mom more evenings, while I picked up hours at work.

 

One day, 3,000 dollars was paid off on one of the credit cards. I let myself get very excited that Spike was on his way home, but I heard not a word from him. I wondered if my sister or mom or dad had somehow done it. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want them to know how excited/grateful/disappointed and stupidly hopeful I was.

 

After I got over my disappointment, I felt angry that the money had been paid on the balance, rather than given to me, so I could meet the minimum payment each month and eek it out over time, to keep us afloat. This couldn’t go on forever and I needed to address it before things got worse. The most reasonable thing was to ditch the house and move in with my mother.

 

“Rent it out,” she suggested.

 

That wasn’t an easy thing to do, not practically or emotionally, but it made the most sense.

 

“What would I do without you?” I asked her, while the moving men stuffed my belongings into her basement. With us moving only four doors down, there was no truck involved. They were rolling the furniture down the street on dollies. It was both funny and embarrassing.

 

“What would I do without you?” she said right back. “You know Buffy. I’ve had the most interesting life of anyone I know...well, maybe with the exception of Spike,” she amended.

 

“But--”

 

“But nothing. Not every older single woman wants to spend her time on cruises and singles dances.”

 

Spike had always said not to abuse my mother’s generosity, but also not to refuse it. Families help each other. It worked both ways, someday she would need me. “Do you think he’s coming back?” she asked me, as we watched the furniture disappear down the same steps he had huddled under years ago, after the cat pee incident.

 

“He’ll be back. But when? I have no idea. Listen, Mom. I know I can’t live here forever. I’ll figure this out.”

 

She put a hand on my arm, then thought the better of it and pulled me into a hug. “Get caught up, get your feet under you.”

 

“At least Dawn is a success,” I said, still mid hug.

 

“Sometimes you’re such a dope, Buffy.”

 

The rent from the house covered the mortgage, house insurance and enough to make the minimum payment on the credit card. I was able to put extra money on toward the credit bill out of my paychecks. It was a huge relief to see the balance going down. Then one day, another 3,000 was paid and I got hopeful again. A few weeks later another 1,700. Oscar told me Spike’s status was now posted as “pending” and I turned into a bundle of nerves.

 

Seeing Spike again was a mixed bag. Of course, I couldn’t wait to have him home, but his effect on me was always overwhelming. As far as I knew, he didn’t know I’d rented out the house, I hoped he wouldn’t terrify the tenants, by showing up in the middle of the night.

 

Via Oscar, he had found out that we’d moved in with my mother. He called me there, told me never to ask which demon he’d had to whore himself out to for the money (I think he was kidding) and that he’d be home the next Tuesday. He showed up on Sunday. He’d been gone 29 months.

 

Spike came into my mother’s house, just before dawn. He stood in the doorway to my room and softly knocked on the doorjamb. “Buffy.” I thought it was a dream, a dream of him coming home to claim me, but in my dreams, he always came through the window. I sat up and looked to the window. He spoke again. “Buffy, Luv.”

 

We met somewhere in the middle of my room in a crazy hysterical hug where I was crying, laughing and definitely feeling like I was flickering through a crazy phase shift.

“You’re early.”

 

“Of course. Told you Tuesday so I could surprise you.” Of course. He went and locked the door, hung his jacket over the chair and took his shoes off. He didn’t ask me how I’d been, but by then, it didn’t matter. Nothing could alter how I’d been, so there was no point dwelling on it.

 

“Did we win?” I asked, watching him undress.

 

“We held our own.” Which was the best that could be expected.

 

“Did they have to call another Slayer?”

 

“Two.”

 

Not a single one had survived since me. I wished I hadn’t asked that question. Spike frowned at me, there was just enough dawning light for me to see. He was peeved that I still had my clothes on.

 

“For fucks bloody sake woman, you made me wait all this time and this is the welcome I get? I plan to collect with interest.”

 

“Hey, it’s not like it was a piece of cake for me either.” I was removing my clothes by then. I wasn’t just referring to the going without sex. “Talking about interest? How about 12.9%?” I referred to the credit cards.

 

“While I’m off saving the bloody world.” He could be such a cocky bastard. Of course, he had to do the wacky vamp tasting me thing. Seriously, he’s never been able to explain to me what it’s about. Yeah, I’ve done it to him too, and I sort of understand it, he’s checking to see if everything is the way it should be, but let me tell you it’s weird to be standing there with your jaw wide open and someone’s tongue in your mouth, like he’s some perverted dentist.

 

When we got into bed, I felt a throbbing sense of relief. We laid there for at least several minutes, skin to skin, holding each other so close I could barely breathe. It was something we’d practiced on our “honeymoon”. Neither of us had ever been much for self-control before that, not when it came to each other and nakedness. Then we’d had enough of holding each other close.

 

“How you want it?” he checked, which was very unusual for a homecoming fuck. He usually had it planned out ahead of time. I wasn’t prepared for the question.

 

“Hard and fast?” He seemed delighted with that answer.

 

After he came, he said in a very ominous tone, “Buffy.”

 

“Yeah?” Well, this was weird, I had anticipated sleepy “after sex” voice.

 

“I want to bite you.”

 

I think that had something to do with the interest he’d mentioned collecting. “Ok, but not on the inside of my arm, that really hurt. I could hardly get anything done for a week.”

 

“Inside of the thigh?” He said hopefully.

 

“Won’t that hurt more? Isn’t there some kind of happy medium?”

 

Big huge sigh. “Just this once, because you’re happy to see me?”

 

Spike went down and did some very nice things to me, to make me a happy and placid Buffy, then he bit the shit out of my thigh. After all the sexy goodness, it really didn’t hurt that much. Hormones are the key, they proved to be the happy medium I’d been looking for.

 

I limped down to breakfast. “Spike’s home.”

 

I think my mother interpreted my limp as being caused by the other inevitable result of Spike’s sex starved, return.

 

“Should I put water on for tea?”

 

I nodded and limped to the fridge.

 

“Buffy? Do you, um, there’s blood running down your leg.”

 

“Oh, crap.” We ended up having to attach a maxi pad to my leg with that stretchy medical gauze stuff. I mean, seriously?

 

A little shriek from upstairs let us know that Spike had announced his presence to Becky. My mother and I grinned at each other.

 

In quick succession, Becky went from squealing with joy and hugging him, to scolding him for being gone so long, to being possessive. She ended up eating her English muffin and jam sitting on his lap, sharing his milky tea. That was not the usual behavior of a sophisticated 9-year-old, but it kept him from touching me, which I think was the plan.

 

Oh dear, she was going all Oedipal on me. She really did, she was so possessive of Spike over the next few months, it was infuriating to me and embarrassing to him. He was used to females having crushes on him, but not someone who was like a daughter to him.

 

Well, actually he admitted there had been a mother/daughter thing once before. She wasn’t HIS daughter and she was older and it turned into some weird menage' et trois thing. There are SO many things I wish I did not know about him.

 

My mother said it was perfectly normal and Becky would grow out of it. “You went through your “daddy’s little girl” phase,” she assured me.

 

“Yeah, but I didn’t want to SLEEP with him.”

 

She had the nerve to cock her brow at me as if to challenge my statement.

 

“Mo-om.”

 

“Not sleep with exactly, but take him away from me? Definitely.”

 

Which perfectly described Becky’s behavior for the next few months. She was wildly jealous and resentful of any attention Spike paid to me.

 

It took several weeks for Spike to arrange his dirty dimensional deals to get cash flowing again (they weren’t all that dirty but I love the way that sounds). The tenants had our house leased for the next several months, so we stayed on at my mother’s. It bothered Spike to do so, but it made more sense than renting an apt for the in-between and it helped us pay off our bills. She took the rent money Spike paid her and gave it back to me to pay bills. I don’t know if he knew or not, but he never said anything about it.

 

Becky developed a crush on a boy at school, much to our relief, and that took away some of her fever over Spike. She never did call him daddy after his return. He was SpikeWilliam again. When she spoke about him to others though she often referred to him as her father, not bothering with pretend, step or otherwise.

 

The more hours Spike saw me working, the more he bugged me to talk to the Council. He said if I was working that hard I may as well be doing good for the sake of humanity.

 

“We need the money.” I had gotten so used to saying that, that it had become automatic.

 

“Which the Council has in spades.”

 

Becky voiced her opinion. “I think it would be cool if you were a Slayer again.”

 

My mother’s response was, “Oh dear god, I knew this day was coming.”

 

 

************************************


	29. The One Where I Dither

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Council wants Buffy back. Becky thinks it sounds exciting. Spike weighs in.

The One Where I Dither

 

Spike turned down the next assignment the “Tribunal” (you’re going to see that in quotes from now on because it could represent any number of groups that Spike did work for) offered him. It was too soon after his long absence. We needed to pull our life together again, and I think I wanted to know that he would say “no” to them if we needed him at home.

 

I felt badly about my need to test him, but I think it’s human nature. He had always, always come back to me, but that’s not the same as not leaving to begin with. Most travelers eventually tire and want to return to home base.

 

This time, when he returned, home base was crumbling. Spike hadn’t been paid for his time during that long tour of duty. He fought because it was important, and he was needed, but he wasn’t a soldier earning a salary. Any money he did earn was the result of the side deals he was able to arrange for himself. When things got involved and dangerous, he wasn’t able to put time or effort into generating income. When he got home, he needed to focus on getting us back on our feet.

 

After turning down that first job, the “Tribunal” didn’t contact him for several months and he had only his “borrowing from other dimensions” gig going. I knew he was restless but we were never sure how long his “jobs” would turn out to be and I wasn’t ready to go without him for another long absence. That wasn’t just because of money, but because I needed to know who we were together. So much of our relationship had been catching each other up on things that happened when we were apart, creating memories and life together felt grounding. We needed to create “home”, so he would have something to come home to.

 

 

There were certain things Spike liked about “home” more than others. Spike likes to be outside, and he would sometimes do yard work at night. He used only hand tools and the hose, so he wasn’t keeping anyone awake. I’m sure it made the neighbors talk when he painted the porches and trim in the dark. His vision allowed him to trim the hedges with perfect ease after Becky and I were tucked into bed. He always washed and waxed the car after dark, which was just as well as the wax job comes out better when the car isn’t in the Sun.

 

He isn’t overly handy around the house, meaning he doesn’t do plumbing or electric repairs, but Spike does like to work with his hands and he’s quite creative. After we moved back to our own home he made built-in bookcases in the den (he calls it the sitting room) and he took a lot of time with them, finishing the edges and putting in molding. They are quite lovely.

 

He liked to do things slowly and correctly, taking his time and working on them in his obsessively meticulous way. That wasn’t Becky’s nature (any more than it’s mine) but some of it rubbed off on her and they worked on a few projects together in her room and made a work island in the kitchen.

 

Mark was very uncomfortable around Spike. He suspected that Spike had taken me away from him, which isn’t really the truth but Spike certainly pounded the last nail in the coffin. It was hard for Mark to face the man who was essentially raising his daughter, and Spike has that way about him. He’s intimidating when he is the least bit challenged, and Mark’s attitude was taken as a challenge.

 

The times when Mark would pick up or drop off Becky and faced him, Spike was unfailingly polite, but also stonily superior and confident. His eyes would do the dark thing, he would refer to Becky as Rebecca and show that he was totally in command of the situation.

 

Mark was befuddled about what to call Spike, and I only recall him actually using his name to his face once. He called him William, but with a stutter and a look of confusion. He wasn’t comfortable calling him Spike and he knew SpikeWilliam was just Becky’s thing for him.

 

Spike, of course, had no problem calling Mark by his name, he showed nothing but ease around him. Jackson called him Spike, on the occasions that their paths crossed.

 

Becky saw less of her father during her adolescent years. She was busy with gymnastics, school trips, and the music lessons that Spike insisted she take. He let her choose the instrument but studying music was nonnegotiable. He played violin when he was young, and Becky tried that for a time. She played piano for two years, practicing on the piano at my mother’s house. Eventually, she settled on the cello. Sometimes she and Spike would play together, and it was so wonderful that I wanted to join them. I brushed off my miserable music skills. I’d taken piano lessons as a girl. After a few discouraging attempts, I returned to musical retirement, having proven myself a better audience than musician.

 

Becky and Jackson experienced a lot of friction during those years, which didn’t make things any easier when it came to visiting her father. A temporary solution was for them to visit Mark on alternating weekends. Spike thought that was ridiculous, and told Rebecca that under no circumstances was she to cause trouble at her father’s when Jackson was there. There was to be no disrespect or fighting. He reminded her that she was the master of herself no matter what her brother did or did not do and her own self-respect would show him for the fool he was.

 

Becky thought it was wildly presumptuous of Spike to tell her how to behave at her father’s house. I told her he was actually trying to help her and she should think about it.

 

 

“Don’t you think that’s for Mark to say?” she challenged me when Spike was out of town and she was headed to her father’s for a week long visit. I wasn’t going to get drawn into a discussion on “who’s yer daddy” with her, so I tried a different route.

 

“Your father and I will pass away, but Jackson will always be your brother.”

 

By this time we’d already dealt with the question of whether or not Spike and I would have any children. We told her it wasn’t possible, and since Mark showed no interest in remarrying, it was likely Jackson was the only sibling she was going to have.

 

“Who needs a brother.” It wasn’t a question. She was at an age where boys weren’t yet seen as actual people. They were there to either fight with or flirt with and were more useful as a foil for discovering her own strengths and interests than they were useful as actual friends. She couldn’t imagine a world where she would ever choose to spend time with Jackson.

 

Dawn was a girl, but I recalled a time period when I felt pretty much the same way about her, but it seemed less likely that Becky and Jackson would suddenly discover they had common interests and want to hang out.

 

Telling an 11-year-old they’ll be sorry someday, is like teaching a rock to sing. She didn’t believe she would ever miss someone who she didn’t like, to begin with, and there was no way to explain a sibling bond. Spike told me I had to let it go, and that in time if it mattered to them, they’d find each other. That is how he often refers to relationships, people finding and losing each other.

 

…………….

 

I didn’t jump back into the Slayer gig, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Every time Spike got a call or left on a job, I was reminded of all that was STILL out there, while I was at home.

 

One day I agreed to meet with one of the Council’s “local” agents who was buzzing through town and wanted to talk with a former Slayer. It was an informal thing, lunch one day, in a rush, between my stops for work. It felt comfortable enough that I asked the agent to dinner the next evening, at our house. Spike and Becky cooked.

 

Dinner discussion turned into a long conversation in the living room after dinner, at which Becky was present. She asked the agent a lot of questions. It went so well, that I began giving the possibility of working with the Council serious consideration. Becky thought it would be cool, and of course, I wouldn’t be doing hand to hand combat or going on dangerous missions...right?

 

When Becky was in middle school, I became very self-conscious about my age. I was afraid I was beginning to look older than Spike. Spike was turned when he was in his twenties, but contrary to popular myth, vampires don’t stay exactly the same forever. Older vampires look...older. There is a certain amount of wear and tear that even human blood can’t erase, and just like normal humans wear the sum of their experiences on their face and in their eyes, so do vampires.

 

When my mother first saw Spike, she didn’t see him as a 20 something-year-old man. She guessed he was closer to 40. The thing is, when you see him, it’s really hard to place an age on him. Depending on his mood and current physical condition, he can look anywhere between 30 and 50.

 

 

The issue of his not aging had come up from time to time in an offhand way, but we hadn’t had an actual serious discussion about it. One day he caught me frowning at my frown lines and inspecting my hair for strands of gray. My mother hadn’t gone gray early, in spite of having me to worry about, but my father had. I tended to take after my mom, but I didn’t know how genetics applied to hair. I also didn’t know if Slayer healing, which I still had to a degree, would affect the aging process. After all, there weren’t many Slayers who made it past 22.

 

Spike told me that my age didn’t matter to him and he’d be with me no matter what. I trusted he would stay, but surely things would have to change between us. He told me he would never turn me, ever, even if I begged. He said he’d be happy to dye his hair gray and do what he could to age along with me. I guessed that was a reasonable idea, though gray hair alone wasn’t going to make that much difference.

 

To address the issue of his needing human blood, and me needing the bonding, we worked out a way for him to feed off me that didn’t leave me incapacitated for carrying boxes of merchandise at work. There’s a place in the crook of your collar bone where you can feel your pulse. It wasn’t overly conspicuous and it wasn’t painful for me in the aftermath.

 

Sometimes, looking down at him feeding I had flashbacks to nursing Becky as a baby. They shared the same look of contented satisfaction on their faces, and I experienced the powerful surge of love and a sense of humility at having a body that could sustain someone I loved. That probably sounds all kinds of weird, but that’s what it’s like. Wow, I have this body, so awesome that it literally feeds the people I love most.

 

When Becky was 12 , aSpike said we should travel to England to see Giles and Kelly and for me to speak more seriously to the Council. He hadan assignment for the “Tribunal” and his plan was to leave a few weeks ahead, then catch up to us while we were there.

 

 

The trip to England, meeting Kelly and her family and seeing Council Headquarters made Becky even more insistent that I get back to work. She had picked up Spike’s habit of waiting for people to get over themselves, though she had nothing like his patience or his look of careless forbearance. She saw no reason why, if I was going to go back to work for them anyway, I hadn’t already done it.

 

While we were overseas Spike took us to France, where he wowed Becky by speaking like a native, and with his ease and competence getting around. I knew he visited there often and several places we went he was recognized and welcomed. He introduced me as his wife and Becky as his daughter and the people who already knew him, seemed to have an understanding of the nature of things, Spike being what he was.

 

I realized that Spike’s taking us through France was yet another part of “operation recruit Buffy”. Several of the people we met were involved with the Council or the Tribunal. They were overjoyed to know I was the most recent surviving Slayer. The talk of the unfortunate endings of girls not much older than herself was sobering for Becky. Most of our previous Slayer stories been all about adventure, romance, intrigue and blinding terror, but obviously, I was still here to tell them.

 

 

The fact that nearly all Slayers are killed in service shook her up a bit, and she wanted to be very sure that any involvement I might have with the Council, would not require me to go face to face with impossible forces.

 

After the trip, when Spike caught up with us at home, I asked him why he was so keen on me getting my hand in things again. He got his very serious look on his face, one that always worried me. He pulled me onto his lap and said “Buffy, I’ve moved my world to the opposite side of the planet for you. To be with you.”

 

So that’s what this was about, payback?

 

“If you come back. We could work together, not have to be apart so much.”

 

“What about Becky? And my life here?”

 

“We’d keep a place here, and Rebecca could stay with her father or your mother and sometimes come with you. You wouldn’t have to be gone all the time.”

 

I very much liked our life in Collinsville and being near my mother, but there were times, more so since our trip, that I did think it would be wonderful to travel. I was jealous of Spike going off on missions, doing the kind of work I used to do. He was making a difference on a scale that had long passed me by.

 

“Rebecca is more than half grown, think about your life…” His brow was all furrowed and I was sure the words “our life” were on the tip of his tongue. He held them back because could we ever really call what we had “our life” when it was just a stop by the wayside for him?

 

 

As usual, I’d been self-absorbed Buffy. I hadn’t considered that Spike might have sacrificed anything to be with me, not really. He had all the time in the world, didn’t he? And hadn’t he gained a lot? Now he had a partner, a daughter, and my mother who was, I think, a true friend for him.

 

“There is a world out there, I want to show you.” He shook me out of my self-absorbed inner chatter.

 

A world he wanted to share with me. He may have all the time in the world for himself, but not for us together. I had an expiration date, and he was, perhaps, more conscious of it than I. After all, I would likely never lose him. Spike knew he would have to give me up, and before that happened, there were things he wanted, for himself, with me. He wanted something he could take with him far into his forever--memories of saving the world with his Buffy.

 

When I was young, I felt like I didn’t truly have anything to give him. I was outclassed by his oodles of experience, but now we had this, a family and a life. I knew that he had something with me he hadn’t had before, that I was enriching his experience.

 

Now he wanted more, he wanted to show me HIS world, give me something I couldn’t have on my own, or with any other man. He was telling me that we could be more together and that I could make his forever that much more worthwhile.

 

“Oh, Luv, the things we can do.” His dark eyes were trying to make me understand as if by looking into them he could show me what I was missing. It was scary, to think of getting back into it, of having to be quick and brave again. I wasn’t sure I was ready to take orders or if I was willing to accept “needs to know” status at times.

 

I wasn’t sure I was ready to put my life in his hands again. We’d be operating on his turf, in his world. I would have to trust him and his experience. We would no longer be a married couple in my world, even if a bit untraditional. I was the queen of my little bit of domesticity. I wouldn’t be queen if I followed him.

 

I buried my head in his shoulder. There was so much to think about.

 

 

“It will be beautiful darling.” He knew I was going to say yes, he just needed to give me a little time.

 

…………………………………………..

 

Not long after that, I was approached to contribute to a book, The Edge of Hell, Real tales of Supernatural Warfare. I had mixed feelings about it. We could use the money. I was thinking about Becky’s college fund, the house needed some work, and Becky would need a car. Sure that was a few years out, but I liked to plan ahead.

 

I met with the editor who was compiling the book and I didn’t have a good feeling about it. The tone of the book was sensationalistic. They only wanted gory stories, near misses, and things that were going to have people tossing and turning all night in their beds.

 

While plenty of my experiences as Slayer fit those criteria, that wasn’t how I wanted to remember those years, and it wasn’t the way I wanted the role of Slayer to be portrayed, or cheapened. It was more than a string of horror stories.

 

Wendy and Giles had likewise been approached and we talked about it together. They felt the same way I did. We had a story worth sharing, but we wanted a better way to share it. Books on similar subject matter were very popular and it would be a good time to publish one. Strike while the best sellers list is hot!

 

We turned down the Edge of Hell book and spoke to a publishing house about doing a collaborative book on the Slayer and the work of the Council. We spoke with several editors and writers and finally found one we felt had the skill and approach to do the story justice.

 

I was back and forth about whether or not to contribute and how much of my story to tell. Spike and my mother were encouraging. Not only did they think it was more than fair that I make some money for all I had done as the Slayer, but they knew how healing it had been for me to share my experiences with the Council, to share memories with Wendy and Giles, and even to share tales of my Slayer years with Becky.

 

They said I glowed, and that with each telling I seemed happier and freer. I appreciated the experience more and incorporated it more fully into my life. Becky LOVED to hear Slayer tales. She thought it would be totally excellent if there was a book.

 

In spite of his encouragement, I know Spike was of mixed mind about it. He is oddly private. I say oddly because in very many ways he is “out there”. He makes no apologies for his past, has nothing to hide and fears no repercussions. At the same time, there are many things he feels are no one’s business.

 

On the other hand, he knew that my collaboration would fan my interest in going back into “The Bizz” as Becky called it. Remembering the stories, seeing my old friends and reliving the triumphs would remind me of the good times, and more importantly, the real service I had done for humanity.

 

I wasn’t depressed. I liked my life, and I liked my job, but I admit, there was something missing. As Becky grew, I felt like I wanted to be more, for myself, but also for her. I didn’t want her to think that her mother was nothing but a washed up Slayer, who had peaked before she was 22.

 

I wanted her to see me as a hero. Sure, that was my ego talking, but there it is. I wanted her to know that I hadn’t given up my glory days because I had her and that having a child didn’t mean putting the important things in life on hold.

 

I saw the way her eyes lit up when Spike and I told stories of my Slayer days, and when Spike spoke about his own work. I didn’t want to be a “has been” in my daughter’s eyes...or my lover’s.

 

Spike was right, Becky was growing up, and it wouldn’t be that many years until she was in college and then what would I do with my life? I liked my job well enough, but I couldn’t imagine staying home and paying the bills while he and Becky went off to see the world.

 

He and Becky spoke again and again about how we should take another trip. I noticed how often, when Spike was out back having a smoke, his eyes were searching a distant horizon.

 

I agreed to do the book. It was a safe way to dip my toe back in. The focus of the book was the mission, they didn’t care much about my personal life or relationships. It was a cathartic experience, and fun. Relaying the stories, I was reminded how it felt to be important, to be of service, the service that Spike kept reminding me, was still out there beckoning to me. I may have aged out of being THE Slayer, but there was still work to be done. I didn’t have to be the one and only, in order to be useful.

 

When the book came out, some of the collaborators and I did a few public appearances. I admit I enjoyed being in a public eye MUCH more than I expected. I still had a part of me that liked being important. I liked having the makeup people fuss over me. I liked being asked questions by the interviewers and people in the audience. I liked people knowing that there were those who fought the good fight. I think it was an important story to tell.

 

When Becky entered middle school Spike encouraged her to study French. She was taking Spanish courses in school, it was the second language that it made the most sense to learn in the USA, especially on the west coast.

 

After our travel overseas, and her watching Spike speaking like a native, she began to grow more interested in learning French. Spike told her that if she studied it, not to get an A on an exam, but to truly speak it, he’d take her on a tour of the country when she was 16. This was a wildly romantic idea, at least as exciting as getting a car for her 16th birthday, which many of her friends anticipated.

 

She still wanted to study Spanish in school, but she took a few French classes when she had open periods, and dedicated her own free time to it. Spike was more than happy to help her. There were times her interest faded or she just got stubborn about it. Spike would speak to her in French and she’d just roll her eyes or respond slowly in broken, poorly accented, phrases. He’d just cut her a look. She knew that he meant what he’d said and that if she wasn’t fluent by her 16th birthday the trip was off.

 

Sometimes she’d grouse, “Why doesn’t Mom have to do it?”

 

There were several responses to that. “Your mother has earned the right to travel anyplace she pleases in this world that owes her its very existence.”

 

Once the book came out, “She’s a celebrity.”

 

Or my favorite. “Because I’m in love with her.” 

 

That’s right! My vampire! Whoot woo! Eat your heart out Becky!

 

I did do a bit of traveling with the book release and I enjoyed it. Spike and Becky weren’t part of those trips, and I realized I would enjoy it even more with them along.

 

I was definitely moving towards going back into the business of supernatural diplomacy and mediation. Spike could see it, Becky could see it, my mother could see it, but I refused to make any promises. I was a bit scared. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. I didn’t want to get my hand back into the game and find out that I wasn’t “all that” or was too outdated to do anything worthwhile.

 

I frustrated the tar out of all of them.

 

…………………..

 

Spike was preparing to leave for a job, and I watched him pack with the same sense of jealousy and fear that I had the other dozens of times I’d watched him pack. I sensed the excitement he felt to be going out on a mission, as well as the frustration that he was going alone. As always there was a hint of trepidation, in case this turned out to be our last goodbye.

 

Each time, since our family trip, things felt heavier and more tense when he left. He didn’t need for me to come back NOW, but he wanted to know if I would and if he should be preparing, in his mind, for more time together, or more time apart.

 

I had stopped worrying about him taking lovers when he was away. If he did, it wasn’t often. I knew that. It was a concession he made for me, and I don’t think it was overly hard for him after I told him how I felt about it. He wanted me to feel safe, and to know he would always come home. Still, we maintained, don’t ask/don’t tell.

 

As years passed, I wondered if I wasn’t losing him in other ways. There were things out there he longed to experience far beyond the beds of other women. I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, ask him to hold back from experiencing the world just so I wouldn’t feel vulnerable.

 

It was our last day together before he left on an assignment. I had taken the day off of work, so we could say our goodbyes while Becky was in school. He was leaving that evening.

 

Neither of us loved goodbye sex, and I sometimes felt like we did it because it felt obligatory. I mean there had to be a last time before he left and it made sense for it to be as close to the time he left, as possible. It felt wrong somehow, to NOT do it. What it if was our last opportunity? Still, there was an awkward heaviness about it, getting into bed together knowing that tomorrow we’d be alone again. It wasn’t performance pressure exactly, but there was a sense of duty there.

 

We were making love, but I could tell that Spike was miles away. His eyes were on that distant horizon, his mind was already fretting over plane and train schedules and who he had to meet and where.

 

“Hey! Spikedaddy,” I called him back to me.

 

He met my eye and smiled. I smiled back. Soon we found ourselves laughing at our whole crazy story. At ourselves. At all of it. He pulled out and lay down beside me.

 

“Where were you?” I asked.

 

 

His eyes cut away from mine for a moment, then shifted back. “Another dimension.”

 

Now, this sounded interesting.

 

“Is it one of the ones we’ve visited?”

 

“Those were time signatures,” he corrected.

 

“So tell me about this dimension of yours.”

 

He drew a finger down the center of my forehead, down my nose, where it leaped over my chin and landed at the base of my neck. He swallowed hard. I guess I had thought he was kidding about being in another dimension, but it looked like he wasn’t.

 

“I was in a place where we weren’t saying goodbye. A dimension where we’re together.”

 

Together. I remember thinking all the way back to the first time we’d had sex. He had said that we had to do it “together”, and I had wondered how much more “together” we could be.

 

There was more together. Even now, after all that time. Having our bodies joined was only a part of it. It took us moving together, at the same pace, the same rhythm, intent on the same end to make it really happen.

 

Here we’d been, in our bed, our bodies joined but very far apart. So far apart that Spike had to travel elsewhere so he could imagine us, together.

 

I was afraid to speak, afraid that this was one of those conversations where someone ends up whispering that this is goodbye, for real, forever.

 

“Where is that dimension?” I asked, and yes I was whispering.

 

“You tell me, Buffy.” Spike wasn’t whispering. He never whispers. “Tell me where we can be together. Tell me, and I’ll meet you there.”

 

I knew what he meant.

 

“I’m not sure I’m ready. I’m not sure I remember how.”

 

“I think that you do.”

 

I trusted Spike more than I trusted anyone, but I wasn’t sure that I trusted him then, about that.

 

He put his hands over mine, brought them to his lips and kissed my fingertips. “We don’t need a time zone of our own anymore. We can be together, here--in this bed--or anywhere. We can make our own damn dimension Buffy, take it with us wherever we go. Conquer the whole damned world if we want to.”

 

“I am so tired of saying goodbye,” I acknowledged, I was probably crying.

 

“You don’t have to, Luv. Don’t you see? Once you say yes, to who you are, to what we are. It won’t ever BE goodbye, because there won’t be anything keeping us apart.”

 

My brain was racing to keep up with him, then I realized it was my heart that needed to do the catching up. He was right. There was something I was saying “no” to, that I was holding back. Every time he left I was saying “wait for me.” I didn’t want him to move on without me, but it was time for me to follow.

 

I didn’t have to accompany him on every mission, that wasn’t what this was about. It was about me not making him promise to come home to me because I was willing to make my home wherever he was. We could choose our own dimension, wherever we were, whenever we were. Not a place to hide from the world, but a means for us to explore it together.

 

“So I should quit my day job?” I asked.

 

“You’ve got money from the book,” he reminded me. It wasn’t anything like a steady income. The book wasn’t a bestseller, but it was doing well and the quarterly checks were getting larger.

 

If I worked for the Council, they would pay me, but many jobs went unpaid. They were done simply because they needed to be. Spike gleaned for himself on many of the missions he took. He made do. The money from the book would help.

 

“This could be the last time we say goodbye,” he said hopefully. Not that we’d go on every mission together, but it would be different when we were on the same team, invested in the same thing.

 

“Or,” I pushed myself up to a sitting position, I leaned over him and let my hair hang down and tickle over his chest. I loved to see him twitch and the muscles of his abdomen dance as he jerked in response. Spike doesn’t giggle, but his eyes and muscles do. “I could say ‘yes’ right now, and we don’t even have to say goodbye tonight.”

 

“You could do that.”

 

“And we could make welcome to the team love.”

 

“Yes, we could.” He seemed to like that idea very much. “We could make see you very soon love.” He sat up and gathered my loose hair in his hand. “We could have what took you so bloody long? sex”

 

I liked THAT idea very much. I could tell by the look in his eyes, that he was going to make me very glad I said “yes” instead of “goodbye”.

 

Now that we were both sitting up, and Spike’s erection was standing up. I climbed onto him and lowered myself onto him. A shiver of pleasure went through him so powerfully that it tickled me inside.

 

His dark eyes were looking into mine with both longing and admiration. It wasn’t happiness, not yet. There would be time for that. Right now we were feeling something deeper. Sealing an agreement.

 

 

He began to kiss me, slow and sweet, and then he was doing that wacky vampire thing, holding my jaw open, exploring every nook and cranny of my mouth, making sure it was me.

 

I smiled in spite of the slight ache in my jaw. He let me go long enough for me to swallow, then he was kissing me again, rougher, more passionately. His hands closing over my upper arms, as he pushed into me.

 

I pulled my arms free and put his hands on my ribs, so he could move me. I loved feeling the power of him. When I was the Slayer, Spike wasn’t stronger than me, but even so, I never moved him when we made love.

 

I used my strength to love him, but never the way he did, picking me up, moving me around. I had never lifted him. I had my own ways of getting him where I wanted him…

 

His eyes closed.

 

“Will?”

 

“Yes, Luv?”

 

“Are we in the same dimension?” I was teasing.

 

He held me firmer and thrust into me deeper. “What do you think?”

 

“Not quite there yet.”

 

“Is that a challenge?” Spike loves a challenge. He didn’t wait for my answer. He shifted his position and my position and began moving again. He knows what gets me off.

 

“I’m pretty sure I’m not on earth anymore.” My words came out choppy from the force of his vigorous thrusting.

 

“Taking you to MY dimension, a place you can only come with me.”

 

I liked his dimension. I liked how he took me there. He knew when I was close. He opened his eyes, he likes to watch me. He says I’m bloody gorgeous, like a flower bud popping open in the Sun.

 

He slowed down.

 

“Don’t slow down,” I complained, I was so close.

 

“Say please,” he teased, looking like the devil himself.

 

“Is this your welcome to the team hazing ritual?” I growled.

 

“No.” He was pumping slow but hard.”If you can wait just a second, Luv, we can arrive together.”

 

Well, , when he put it like that. It was something that had happened only a handful of times in all our years together, and it did seem appropriate to seal the deal this way.

 

“We could count down from 10.” he suggested.

 

My patience was wearing thin. ”Spike!”

 

“How about three? Three….two…..”

 

God damn him. I needed just another second. I dug my nails into his shoulder to still him.

 

“One and a half….”

 

“Spike.” I dug my nails deeper.

 

“One and a quarter…”

 

I would have laughed if I wasn’t so...involved.

 

“One and an eighth…”

 

He started before me, but only a moment before.

 

“Soooo much better than goodbye sex.” I panted, a minute later when the zingies were settling down. He gnawed on my shoulder, making happy noises.

 

……………….

 

Becky could tell something was up at dinner.

 

“OK, what’s going on?” she demanded, looking from Spike to me. “You’re never this happy when Dad is leaving.” She hadn’t referred to him that way in a long time.

 

“Your mother has news.” He was grinning from ear to e but trying to play it cool.

 

I thought maybe it shouldn’t BE news, maybe we should talk to Becky first before I said it was for certain. Spike must have sensed my hesitation, he gave me a piercing, nearly threatening look.

 

I hadn’t changed my mind. I wouldn’t change my mind. I just didn’t want Becky to feel like I’d pulled the rug from under her. This was going to affect her life in a huge way.

 

“Well, I know you’re not pregnant,” Becky smirked. “And you’re both smilingn so that must mean…”

 

“I’m going to take a position with the Council.” For a moment my face felt red hot, then I took a breath and felt a thrill pass through me. I was terrified but mostly excited.

 

Becky got up to hug me, threw her arms around me with a squeal then stopped mid-embrace. “Does this mean we’re moving to England?” I could hear the brakes screech on her ecstatic mood.

 

“No, at least not now. No major changes yet,” I assured her. I caught Spike’s eye. Again, he was making sure I wasn’t backing out. I wasn’t, but I did need time to figure out what this would look like, and feel like.

 

We ate the rest of our meal, talking cheerily. It was our habit, when Spike was leaving, to talk about all things upcoming, this time in included something of a “to do” list for me, concerning the steps I would need to take.

 

My mother had already said her goodbyes to Spike, she always let the three of us have a last dinner together alone. I think she didn’t want to deal with weepy, sullen Buffy and her tears.

 

This time it was trepidacious Buffy, but no tears. Even though we didn’t expect Spike to be gone long, Becky gave him a harder hug than usual and kissed his cheek, and he kissed me more passionately than he usually did in front of an audience.

 

Becky was studying us together, I could tell. She was at an age when things were falling into place when each day she was reframing things in her life and understanding them in a new way. I wondered what she saw right then.

 

I often wondered what she thought of our life and our arrangement. The time had passed since she thought of Spike as a spy. She no longer asked if we were going to get married. What did she see now? Knowing what she now knew, seeing the joy in my and Spike’s eyes? I wondered if she worried then, that he was going to take me away from her, the way my mother had once wondered.

 

In that moment, standing before our daughter, had Spike kissed me that way, to remind me, himself and Becky who it was I REALLY belonged to, belonged with?

 

Becky came into bed with me that night after Spike had left. She snuggled beside me and initiated a conversation about the big news. She asked what had finally pushed me to make the decision.

 

“Are you afraid he won’t come back one of these times?” She was outlining the pattern on the duvet cover, with her finger. I knew she wasn’t asking if I feared for his life or well-being. She wanted to know if I was afraid of losing him.

 

“No.” I wasn’t, at least not in such an obvious way. He would come back, but I was afraid that each time he’d leave more and more of himself behind, in the field. So in that sense, yes, I was afraid of losing him, of losing us. I wasn’t ready to admit that to her. I don’t think she could have understood, it would only have worried her.

 

“Don’t you want me to do this?” We had talked about it so often, but I knew that talking about something and actually doing it are very different things. It was safe when it was just talk.

 

“I do. Mom, what happens to me, if something happens to YOU?” She’d heard the tales, and of course read the book and seen the interviews.

 

“I’m not planning to…”

 

“Yeah, I know, but if something did?”

 

“You have your father, and Gran.”

 

“But what about SpikeWilliam?”

 

Becky wanted to know what HER status was with Spike. She wanted to know if he only cared for her, was THERE for her because of me. Did he love her? Should something happen to me would she lose him too?

 

I knew Spike cared for Becky deeply, and he felt responsible for her and proud of her. Still, I had no answer for her. If I died, would he take care of her, or would he float off into the ether? Maybe he would hand my mother the keys to the house and with a kiss on the cheek, say his goodbyes and never look back.

 

“We’re a family,” I said, and I knew that was true. I just wasn’t 100% certain what the glue that held us together was. After all, Becky wasn’t Spike’s genetic child.

 

“Your father would get custody Becky, it’s how it works.” I could tell her that much. She would be taken care of by someone who loved her. Indeed, if I did die, I expected that Mark would be happy to take Becky far, far away from the puzzling and disconcerting SpikeWilliam.

 

I had met Spike when I wasn’t much older than she was then.

 

“I’m glad you’re doing this. I think it’s going to be great,” she said firmly. I know she meant it, even though she was scared and uncertain of some things. She felt the rightness of it.

 

“What did he say that changed your mind?” She wasn’t letting that one go.

 

I fidgeted a little, realizing I hadn’t changed the sheets after Spike and my welcome to the team sex. It wasn’t really an issue, it’s not like I changed the sheets every time we made love, but that night it felt weird. This is where, a few hours earlier, he’d laid his claim to me.

 

Here was my daughter, feeling out the parameters. It wasn’t Spike’s prowess as a lover that made me change my mind. Well not exactly, but it had reminded me of the places we could go, and the things we could do...only together.

 

What HAD Spike said? The same thing he had said to me 1000 times in action, word and deed--yes, you can. A long, long stream of “yes’s”, and then a question. Buffy, this time, will you accept MY invite? This time he needed me to say “yes” to him.

 

“He didn’t change my mind,” I explained. Somehow our hands had found each other’s. “He just asked me if I would.”

 

“And it’s time,” she said.

 

“It is.”

 

“Tell me again, how you met.”

 

I smiled but was unsure what to say. She knew we’d met when he was working for the “Tribunal” and I was working for the Council, but she didn’t know more. Not what I felt the moment I first saw him. Not how we fought or flirted. Not well...you know.

 

She knew I met him when I was young before I knew her father. I think she was asking if I’d loved him then, before her father.

 

I didn’t know what the right answer was. This was why people say “it’s complicated” because they aren’t sure which story is supposed to be true. Which would comfort her more, knowing that I’d loved Spike since I was a girl, or believing her father had once been the love of my life? Maybe it came back to who would be there for her if something happened to me. Maybe she was asking me what kind of man had I chosen for myself and for her.

 

“I will, but not tonight,” I told her. Tonight wasn’t a night for confessions, it wasn’t the time to choose which version of history felt the best.

 

“Have you told Gran you’re going back yet?” she checked.

 

I smiled. “I haven’t, but I’m pretty sure she knows.” Becky looked at me and we both laughed. Out of everyone in the world, my mother knew me best.

 

It was while Spike was away that I was approached about the possibility of making the book into a television program. The book, as I mentioned, had very little personal information in it, the TV program would want...the rest of the story. Would I be willing to divulge more information about my life?

 

I wasn’t sure, but I was excited by the idea of being the subject of a weekly TV program. The possibility of more money, of course, was attractive. Especially since Spike had spoken of having a residence on both sides of the Atlantic. That, plus travel for Becky and my mother for holidays and visits would all add up. The Council and “Tribunal” would pay our work expenses, but they wouldn’t hand me a blank check.

 

Since Wendy, Xander, Giles and I had already collaborated on the book, those were the stories and characters they used as the base for the show. Spike had been mentioned in the book but never his relationship with me. They’d included how he figured in as the bad guy, and occasionally the good guy, but never that he was MY guy.

 

My mother didn’t take the news that I was going back “to work” with either enthusiasm or trepidation. It was as if it had always been a done deal and now we just needed to address the logistics. I knew she was happy for me because I had made the decision and could now move forward.

 

She knew it was what was best for me, but knew I had to come to it on my own, or...more likely, with the help of Spike.

 

She got a kick out of the idea of a TV program and was more and more tickled as the project progressed. Sunnydale, the Hell Mouth...she said it felt a bit like someone was making muppets of us. She also had her serious moments, when she’d sit with a glass of wine, swirling it its glass, gazing into it and noting that no one could ever know what it was REALLY like, what it IS really like.

 

My life reduced to a cool 47 minutes a week.

 

When Spike called and I told him about the TV show, he was literally speechless. His first response after a minute of silence, was, “You said no of course..” then, “No, of course, you didn’t say no.”

 

Wisely, he told me to clear it all with the Council before I signed any paperwork concerning the TV program. He wanted me to remember I had said “yes” to HIM first, and he wasn’t going to let me do anything that might cause a conflict between my post as Slayer emeritus and celebrity half removed. If push came to shove, he would win.

 

The Council had already cleared any information shared in the book, and I didn’t have to offer any more of my story than that, to be included. The writers were already going to have to alter things in a myriad of ways, so creating backstory, and a love story for Buffy wasn’t going to be a problem. The only problem was I might not like what they chose for me.

 

I played it safe, and initially only signed the rights to the information in the collaborative book. That was all I had time for anyway.

 

I had my new life to arrange.

 

************************************

 

Q&A

 

it confuses me how Spike seems to be still having sex with other women while he is on "missions". It just seems odd that he wanted her to be sure about being all in with him, them living together, and even a surrogate father to her child but still sleeping with other women when he is gone on his "missions"? Can you help me to understand that?

I refer you back to the title of my book and the first pages where I explain that there is nothing “correct” about our story. It is what it is. I also refer you back to “personal” and just business.

Spike has lived as a free agent for most of 140 years. He’s a vampire. Consequences for his behavior are considerably different than for the average human man. A lot of it boils down to the fact that he’s used to getting laid, and it didn’t much matter to him, and often as not to his partners, as far as long-term consequences go. So he did it.

He doesn’t experience having sex with other women the way I would experience having sex with another man. It doesn’t mean the same thing to him. Another guy away on a trip might get horny and jerk off, that makes no sense to Spike if he could just find a woman to sleep with. It would be like someone having a moral dilemma over stopping to get food when they are hungry. I could never and would never have that level of casual sex, I’m not emotionally capable of it. 

Spike isn’t human. I don’t know if there is any way to relay what that means to someone who hasn’t experienced having a relationship with a creature that has some major fundamental differences. I benefited from many of the ways he is not like a human man, and I had to likewise deal with the parts of that that didn’t sit comfortably with me. 

Spike’s thought is that you have two people who want sex, to .and having sex isn’t a big deal, so why go without? Because Buffy wouldn’t like it. So what? Buffy is 1000 miles away in a comfortable house, what does scratching this itch have to do with HER?

Spikes sexual world was like that for over a century. He loved me, he traveled across the planet to save me, to be with me, all the while carrying on his normal sexual behavior. So, he didn’t see a lot of reason why anything should change when I was who he came hto.

What’s shocking is that he DID change at all, because I told him it made me insecure. Spike doesn’t expect any of his lovers to be true to him. He didn’t expect it of me until we actually settled down together. Then he did because he’s crazy possessive AND he knew that if I was sleeping with someone else, it was a big deal and was a definite challenge to our relationship. I would never have slept with another man just because I was horny. 

Sexual fidelity is a pretty big issue for most people, it’s nearly a nonissue for vampires. When I told him how much it bothered me, he addressed it. While I am not certain that he was always faithful after that he was certainly faithful much more of the time and I didn’t bug him about the details.

 

Being the Slayer seems to have cut some very important development in Buffy's life. She is fairly aimless. No direction, no thoughts to the future. Is that just a Buffy thing or do most former Slayers have the same problem?

There have been very few surviving Slayers. Other than Kelly, the only other living surviving Slayer I knew of when I aged out, had substance abuse and domestic partner abuse issues.

It’s hard to adjust when you have something that is that much a part of your identity, and you’re crazy important, and then you’re not.

In my defense, I don’t feel that once I had Becky I was aimless. I was a mom, who raised her daughter, had a stable home life and worked a steady job.

Once I settled down with Spike, I think I was about as stable as most people are.

As far as plans for the future. I bought a house. Had a college fund for Becky. Spent time with my family, had a retirement account. I definitely had my head screwed on crazy for awhile, but once I became a mom, I feel like my direction was pretty clear.


	30. The One Where I Get Philosophical

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the even of her new career, Buffy muses over life, love, and motherhood, and Spike, and the Powers That Be bring her a special gift.

The One Where I Get Philosophical

 

 

A lot happened in the four months Spike was away. I had quit my job and had begun sorting through our things. We weren’t moving but I felt like I needed to rid my life of both real and virtual clutter. I was taking regular phone meetings with Council representatives, and getting back into the swing of things. Becky and I had begun to eat our meals sitting on the couch because I had my “Slayer files” spread on the dining table. I had to take care of that before Spike returned because that was SO not going to fly with him. He could not abide a messy house.

 

It was a long mission for him, and I wondered if he’d stayed away that long on purpose, as some kind of a test. When he came home all doubt fled from my mind. The way he looked at me and embraced me, gave the impression that he couldn’t have lived without me a moment longer. (Turns out that wasn’t far from the truth)

 

The night Spike returned, Becky was at her father’s. Spike came to collect me at my mother’s where I’d been having dinner with her and Dawn, who was home on a visit. When Spike walked in, Dawn saw him and said, “Oh boy, they’re going to go all Romeo and Juliette aren’t they?”

 

“I’d say they’re more like Tristan and Isolde,” Mom said.

 

“Guinevere and Lancelot,” I weighed in.

 

Spike shook his head at all our nonsense and kissed me. We said our goodnights to my mother and sister and he took me home. At that moment none of us could have predicted that someday, people would be comparing their own relationships to Buffy and Spike.

 

“Rebecca?” Spike asked as we entered the small gate to our back yard.

 

“At Mark’s.”

 

He kissed my hand and I could feel his smile. He was glad we were alone, and truth be told, so was I. My face was smiling but my mind frowned, recalling Becky’s questions about who would take care of her if….

 

We stepped onto our covered back porch. Spike fell back onto his favorite wicker settee with the flowered cushions. He pulled me towards him. I was surprised he’d stopped there and hadn’t hurried us into the house. He’d been gone a long time and he usually had no patience when it came to getting me into bed. Immediately suspicion rose in me. Non-lusty Spike was an anomaly.

 

“You’re nice to come home to,” he said, burying his face in my hair.

 

“Is this place nice to come home to?” I planned to inch towards Becky’s questions via a non-threatening route.

 

“Yes, very. It suits us. Our life.”

 

I agreed. Our house and yard were cozy and comfortable. Every time we came home it felt like a homecoming. There was nothing sleek or modern or sterile about the home we’d made together.

 

“Spike, what if I die?” So much for my non-threatening route. I guess using “if” was a bit weird because I am going to die. “When”, would have been a more suitable word, unless I was going somewhere with my line of questioning, and of course I was.

 

“Are you worried about our work?” he checked. He sounded tired. We’d had SO many discussions about it, yet somehow we’d missed this one.

 

“Becky is worried.”

 

“That you’ll die?”

 

“She’s worried about what would happen if I died. To her.”

 

“I have no legal rights, you know that.” There was frustration in his tone, but it wasn’t at me, or Becky. He had papers and a legal identity, but none of it applied to another man’s child. “She’d have to go to Mark.” I could tell from his voice that he wasn’t 100% enthused by that idea. He didn’t think Mark was a bad man, but like me, he wasn’t sure if Mark would try to keep Becky from seeing him. Mark had never been comfortable around Spike, and Spike had done nothing to alleviate that situation. We don’t always think of all the eventualities we may one day face when we are dealing with people on a day to day basis.

 

Spike’s frustration spoke volumes. He considered Becky to be his daughter. He behaved that way, he referred to her that way and I could tell by the tension in his muscles that the thought that Mark could, even for a few years, keep them apart, was grievous to him.

 

“She’s like you then,” he said. “Never quite believes I’m going to come back.” Now he sounded tired and hurt.

 

“It sometimes feels hard to compete with the life you lead,” I admitted.

 

“Maybe I should have retired for a time. Stayed here and got a job at an oil change shop.”

 

“They close at night.”

 

“Opened up an all night oil change shop.” He corrected, without skipping a beat.

 

No, of course, he shouldn’t have. All of us were better for the way things were, each of us honestly filling our role, not harboring secrets or sitting on our questions.

 

“She’s my daughter Buffy, I love her, I take care of her. I nag her. You’d think that last bit would be proof enough. I wouldn’t go on about things if I didn’t expect her to be part of my life.” He withheld the “forever” that a mortal man would have used to finish that thought.

 

Part of his life until? And then what? What of Becky’s children, and her children’s children? At what point would we cease to be his family? At what point would he be free to walk away into his own “forever”? Someday he would. He would have to. He would fall in love again, with someone, likely someplace else, and he would start the process over.

 

Spike is the love of my life, but I can never know for certain if I will be his. I cannot tell you how unspeakably sad that has made me at times. He tells me that I am the love of THIS man, THIS Spike, the man I know. No other woman has had his heart.

 

Someday he will not be this Spike anymore. The world will turn round and he will be called another name, and he will know new things and have skills and goals that will differ from the ones he has now. I will have been part of him becoming that new man, that will love another woman.

 

We raise our children to carry on after us, but most of us don’t face the task of doing the same for our spouse. He will love differently, father differently, and live differently because of our years together. In some fashion not only is Becky my legacy, but Spike is too. He will carry the imprint of our love into a future I’m not part of.

 

Humans lives are held together by the tension of mortality. We balance everything we do against it. Till death do us part. We talk about “The One”. We make plans for our declining years. We know it will end, and though it makes us sad, it’s also a relief. There will be closure. We will have our time, and then we will hand it on to our children.

 

That’s the only way I know to think and to plan, but for Spike it’s different. He is always curious what waits round the next bend. He can’t ever say, “this is what I will do until I’m too tired to do anything anymore.” He can’t ever relax and say “this is IT.” He can’t ever honestly say to someone “You are my forever person.”

 

No matter how much he loves me, some silly, foolish part of me worries that one day, he may love someone more. I want to think of him as mine, forever. Spike never needs to feel that pointless, stupid jealousy. I will never love someone, know someone or crave anyone else the way I do him.

 

You might think that would make him pompous, and full of himself, but he says it’s the opposite. He says it’s a responsibility and burden to be that important to someone else. He hopes that he can live up to that role, knowing that he’s my one shot at getting things right. He doesn’t want to fail me. He may love again, I won’t.

 

Becky and I are mortal and with that comes a certain kind of pettiness that we need to survive. We want assurances, even need them, so we will feel safe enough to take chances. Spike knows there are no assurances, not really. He’s learned to make his home many places and adopt many people as his own. He knows no promise can be kept forever. He also understands that I need promises and that my forever is abbreviated. What’s impossible in his world, may well be possible in mine.

 

He believed that Rebecca and I could understand some of his world, and some of his reality. We could be less petty, and less uncertain, and more willing to let go of must, and need, and should.

 

“You’ll understand, both of you will...in time. When we’ve done it together,” he said hopefully. We would come to know the meaning of home, and the meaning of belonging and the way that loving one thing doesn’t stop you from loving other things too. It’s why he wanted to take us with him, so we could know just how big our understanding of ourselves and the world could expand.

 

“Do you think if you lost a child, or me, that you would ever forget? That having another child or finding another lover would ever replace the one that you lost?” He challenged me.

 

I knew a trick question when I heard one and that the wise old vampire was attempting to teach me a lesson. I had already lived that. For seven years I lived and loved men other than Spike, but I never forgot him, never stopped loving him. So many times in those years the thought came to me how Spike would have enjoyed this, or how Spike would have chided me over that. People don’t replace others. They make their own space in your heart.

 

I already understood that. I did. Loving Spike and loving Becky didn’t replace, or lessen or in any way impair how much I loved my mother. Nothing would touch that and if I lost my mother, nothing Becky or Spike ever did, would replace her. I DID understand but had a harder time believing that he felt that way about me.

 

I knew Spike had loved women before, but I had always been too insecure to ask him anything beyond that. I didn’t want to know. I wondered if that was hard for him, the way it had been for me the years we were apart when there were so few people I could mention him to.

 

When did Spike take his previous loves out to air? Was it different for him, because there had already been more than one? Once you know that you will have many opportunities to love deeply, does it make you less wistful? I don’t know if I will ever be brave enough to ask, and if I will ever want to know those stories. He said he has no secrets, he will tell me anything I want to know.

 

He’s told me some of his stories of women, but he keeps them vague. It’s better that way. Maybe when I’m old I’ll feel less threatened.

 

As we sat in the dark I realized he was trembling slightly. “Are you OK?”

 

“I need to feed.” He said it in a very quiet, matter of fact tone. That would explain why we weren’t up in bed.

 

“Are you hurt?”

 

“No.” He offered no further explanation.

 

“It’s just been awhile?”

 

“I need to feed from you.” He took my hands between his, holding them together as if in prayer. He only does that when there is disquiet in him, and he’s trying to hold things together.

 

Whatever was bothering him, whether it was something that he’d brought home with him or something that arose from our conversation, he didn’t need me to ask him any more questions. We had hedges around the yard and it was rather late in the evening. I stripped my top off and snuggled onto his lap.

 

“Thank you, Buffy. Thank you.” he murmured as he sank his teeth in and took long, almost desperate pulls.

 

I’ve learned, through the years of living with him, that MY mindset affects his feed. If I am angry, or feeling selfish or resentful it’s harder for him to draw blood, but if I feel loving and bountiful and generous, it spills into him. I heard him take full throaty swallows. I felt him growing hard beneath me. I wanted him to be whole, and to know how happy I was to have him back, and how ready I was to share.

 

He must have taken a lot, not a dangerous amount, but more than he usually did. I recall him setting me on the bed and bringing me a bottled smoothie. I drank it while he unpacked a few things in the dark. He came and fastened a chain around my neck. He’d brought me a cameo he’d been given in exchange for work. I felt the carved face, trying to picture it through my fingers, but I couldn’t make sense of it.

 

“What have you done to the closet!?” he remarked upon opening the door.

 

“I’m making room for our new life.”

 

He chuckled, and yes he was laughing AT me, not with me. He laughed because I am so mistrustful, thinking I had to give something up to have something more, believing, yet again, that somehow I had to leave my old life behind rather than allow it to propel me forward on its own momentum.

 

“There was a lot of old junk. It needed to be done,” I said in my defense, and I wasn’t wrong. Still, he knew why I had done it and clucked his tongue at me all the same.

 

“Don’t go turning your back on all your salesgirl skills,” he warned me. “I’m counting on your powers of persuasion.”

 

“Meh, if they don’t succumb to my sales pitch, you can always beat them into shape.” I was joking...kind of.

 

“You know I do sometimes.” He reminded me of the less seemly nature of his work.

 

Yes, I did, but I hadn’t really given it much thought. I hadn’t seen Spike fight in decades, not since he and I had gone at each other, and neither of us had been pulling out all the stops. I would see things, working with him, that I hadn’t before. I would come to know parts of him I’d only heard tell of.

 

Yes. I knew he sometimes beat them into shape, or worse. I was getting back into what was often a nasty business. His hands were moving over me by then. He’d undressed me and was reacquainting himself with every square centimeter of my skin.

 

“With my body, thee I worship.” he repeated a line from the marital vows in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, the way he sometimes did when he made love to me.

 

“Go on,” I teased. I often made him repeat the next part.

 

“With all my worldly goods, I thee endow.”

 

“That’s my vampire.” I tugged at the cameo on my neck. I didn’t know then, that it was framed in pearls and had a diamond embedded in it. I’ll bet he was smirking up a storm, well aware of just how much he’d endowed me with.

 

I wasn’t aware of its magical properties either.

 

He must have taken a lot of blood because I didn’t wake up at my usual time in the morning. It was nearly lunch time when I blinked suspiciously at the blinds then checked the clock. I sat up and felt dizzy. Spike was sleeping peacefully beside me. I shook him.

 

“Are you OK?” He had never taken enough blood that I felt woozy the following day, something had to be up with him.

 

He rolled over and looked at me with dark, troubled eyes.

 

“What happened?” I demanded, there had to be a story behind this.

 

“Nothing.”

 

“OK, what didn’t happen?”

 

“Someone didn’t go to sleep minus their mate last night.”

 

I had to do some mental gymnastics to ferret out the meaning. Spike had been getting desperate for human blood, and instead of draining some poor innocent person, he brought it home to me. He didn’t often allow things to get desperate.

 

“I needed you, and you were there,” he translated for me. He also got up and brought me yogurt and a banana and told me about the cameo while I ate. The reason I hadn’t been able to make sense of the face was that it was NOT a face, it was a seahorse, with a tiny diamond as its eye and framed in tiny pearls. It was a protection charm against all watery dangers. Spike had once been in a shipwreck, and even though it hadn’t taken place very far from land, he says it was terrifying. He watched a number of people drown and it left a lasting fear in him.

 

This was a “gift” from someone who’s family burial vault he had “invaded” to recover several pieces of jewelry that an ancestor had buried with her, rather than leave for her sisters to fight over.

 

He requested this piece specifically because he recognized its significance and it didn’t seem to hold any particular sentimental value for the family the way the other items did. He’d had it “gone over” by one of his “guys”, and they had cleaned it mystically and strengthened the ward on it. He said if I was going to be traveling overseas he wanted to know I was well protected.

 

I let this filter into my mind. Him taking care of me for having taken care of him.This beautiful cameo demonstrated, how he thought of me, planned for me, planned for us together.

 

“Thank you, it’s perfect.” Not just the pendant, but the day, and the situation, and us being here for each other.

 

I heard the wonder and deep intention in his tone as he told me of the cameo and it’s properties, and knew he saw this as a symbol of our future.

 

“Make love to me again,” I requested.

 

“You’re not too tired?”

 

“It’s kind of nice being a little loopy.”

 

He chuckled at that. I had blood for him in the fridge and he’d drank his fill. He was good to go, though he warned me that he’d need another hit off me in a day or two.

 

“I love that I can do that for you.”

 

“I love that you will do it for me. I’ve never been with anyone like you Buffy. You take me as I am, and you’re not afraid of me.” He sounded genuinely surprised. Of course, you already know I’m thrilled whenever there is anything that sets me apart from his other women.

 

He and I could be quite the little mutual admiration society when he was first home from a trip.

 

We ignored the ringing phone, while Spike gave me the happies again. A little while later there was a knock on the door. Dawn had walked over to invite us for lunch since we hadn’t taken her phone call. Spike answered the door and told her I was still in bed.

 

“Why am I not surprised?” was her tart remark. “Get out of bed Buffy, you can’t have sex all day long, you need to refuel.”

 

I technically wasn’t in bed for the sex, but since I was already there…Let it never be said Spike and I wasted an opportunity.

 

“Your sis is feeling a bit under the weather,” Spike said cryptically.

 

“Bullshit. Buffy doesn’t get sick. What, do you have her chained up in you guy’s kinky sex playground?” I could hear everything. Dawn doesn’t have a quiet voice and she was already part way up the stairs.

 

I do get sick, but not often, she had something of a point there. I still have a killer immune system.

 

“Don’t come in!” I shrieked in mock horror. “Wait till I put away the leather and whips.”

 

“Ha, ha, ha.” Dawn pranced in. “You are in bed!”

 

“Of course I am, we’ve been having sex all day.” I waved her over. “Look what he brought me.” I held out the cameo as best I could, but it was on a short chain, so she bent near to inspect it and noticed the bite marks.

 

“Buffy! What did he DO to you?” Maybe she’d noticed I looked a bit pale and worn. The marks, I hadn’t yet realized, were surrounded by a very dark hickey and stretching considerably beyond that outline, were two large, livid merged bruises.

 

Dawn “knew” that Spike was a vampire but she knew it the way you know that someone you work with has a fake foot that you never see. You know it, but it doesn’t mean anything because his socks and pants always cover it. To her, Spike was her brother in law who happened to have cool hands and a Sun allergy, but nothing more. From what she saw, his vampirism had little effect on our daily lives and she wasn’t around very often.

 

Neither she nor my mother had ever seen him in game face. Becky hadn’t seen him in game face, though she did know he sometimes bit me. There was no hiding the marks entirely from her, but even so, the marks she saw were nearly always small, neat and relatively healed. I had my “post bite” set of shirts I wore when I had fresh marks that kept everything neatly covered. Spike had never bitten me quite like this and I had made zero attempts to hide it.

 

Even though I didn’t know the extent of what she was seeing, I did have the experience of having seen numerous necks of people who’d been bitten but hadn’t survived long enough for the vampire to bring them breakfast in bed. It’s not pretty. There are hickeys and bruises and lacerations.

 

“What?” I could hear the slight shaky laugh in my voice, even as my hand went to cover the mark. I was already, automatically, doing damage control, ready to laugh it off.

 

Spike hadn’t followed her upstairs, it was just her facing me on the bed, sister to sister. “Does he do that a lot?” Her voice was now a hissy whisper, and I think she felt like she’d just discovered her sister was being abused by her mate.

 

“It’s fine. It’s nothing. I mean this is normal.” For us.

 

“Normal that you can’t get out of bed? That you look like that?”

 

“Well, maybe this one is a little more than normal…Something happened while he was gone. But it’s fine. Really.”

 

I could see a story knitting together in her brain. Guy goes off to a war of some kind, comes home mentally messed up and takes it out on his wife. Details at 11.

 

“Is this some kind of sex play?” She was trying to find a setting in which this could be OK.

 

Sometimes biting/feeding was part of sex play, but it hadn’t been last night. Spike hadn’t gotten off doing it. He hadn’t been able to get off until he’d done it. The night before had been a necessity.

 

“He has to have human blood sometimes,” I explained to her, fidgeting my cameo back and forth on its chain.

 

“And he takes it from you?”

 

“Who else do you think he should take it from?” I challenged her. “Do you think it would be OK for him to do this to someone else?” This time I pulled the collar down to expose the extent of the bite to her.

 

“If he loves you, how can he hurt you like that?”

 

“It doesn’t hurt!” It was a lie, sort of. Physically it did hurt, which was part of the reason that we usually did it during sex. In the height of passion things that would normally hurt a lot, sort of get buried by the pleasure hormones. After years of associating his feeding off me with sexual pleasure, a weird sort of mental association now took place. I got a rush when he bit me, even if I hadn’t been turned on previously. Still, I couldn’t honestly say that it didn’t hurt, even while he was doing it, and it does hurt afterward, sometimes quite a bit, but not like she was thinking.

 

 

I was pretty sure she was seeing this as Spike beating on me and me making like it was just because he got out of hand in the heat of the moment, and that meant it didn’t count. Truth was that sort of fit this particular instance. Spike had taken more than usual, but it was out of necessity.

 

I hadn’t had to defend him, or our lifestyle, in quite awhile. Telling her this was how it had to be for us to be together, sounded even more like an abused woman defending her abuser. But it was how it had to be. He needs human blood and I can’t be with him if he’s feeding off hapless victims.

 

How he gets human blood when we are apart is a moral gray area. He can go a long time without if he doesn’t experience incident and injury. On most of his trips, he didn’t need to feed, but there are times he does and he’s paid whores and junkies for a fix, or, I suspect, taken it from a lover somewhere. I’m not sure which bothers me more. The image of him sucking on the wrist of a strung out junkie is depressing. The image of him drawing from the arm or neck of a lover while he’s buried to the hilt inside of her is heartbreaking.

 

Explaining those circumstances to Dawn wasn’t going to raise her opinion of him. “Listen to me.” I took her hands. “He has a condition, he needs blood. If I was married to a man who needed regular transfusions and donated a pint or two a month would that bother you? It’s just like that, except there’s no middle man.”

 

That is the long and short of it, the brutality was a necessary evil, it fed the demon that allowed his body to be potentially immortal. My brain was spinning, there wasn’t a single argument about this I hadn’t played through my mind. People slaughter animals for meat by the millions every day. Dawn wasn’t a vegetarian. She was just comfortably several steps removed from the carnage.

 

Dawn didn’t know about the beings whose lives I’d taken with my weapons, with my hands. This hickey and bruise and messy, scabby puncture wounds were nothing compared to things I’d done to sentient beings. Sitting there talking to her I felt something happen that I never had before. I felt my eyes go dark, the way Spike’s did when he was letting all he knew and had experienced flood into his eyes.

 

I saw Dawn react. I recognized the look, a mixture of horror and respect, awe and terror and I saw something in her back down in acquiescence. She had sensed she was out of her league, that there were things she didn’t know and didn’t want to know, that were better left to those equipped to deal with them.

 

The Slayer had risen in me. I felt it. My muscles fizzed with power, I felt a heady rush and had a sense that my blood thickened. I didn’t feel dizzy, or helpless, or like I was trying to make excuses anymore. She saw the authority in me, and I felt if. The Slayer was back.

 

This I had not known, that if I chose to call her forth, to put her into service, the Slayer was there for me. I wasn’t returning to work with the Council as former Slayer Buffy Summers; I was coming back as me.

 

“Buffy! The...it’s changing.” Dawn pointed to my neck. The bruise was fading before her eyes.

 

I didn’t have to see it, I could feel it. I wasn’t dizzy, or afraid or apologetic. Slayer instinct was building inside of me, coursing through me, pushing doubt out of my mind as some slick hot oily power was seeping out of my lizard brain and into my muscles.

 

“Dawn, this is OK. It’s who I am.”

 

I thought I’d left the Slayer far behind. I had wanted to. I hadn’t believed I could live with both Buffy’s inside me. I didn’t know that she was still here with me. So many things made sense now...the way I felt when I was pregnant, the way Mark had looked that night I told him Becky was staying with me, the strength I found to do whatever life had required of me when I allowed myself to get out of my own way.

 

I didn’t know if Kelly had ever felt this, she’d never said, but her sense of calm and sense of comfort with who she was told me she did. She knew who she was and what she could do. I hadn’t known, not until that moment when Dawn and I were holding hands and I had to call forth resources to explain the inexplicable.

 

I pulled her to me in a hug of joy and relief. I felt like I was gasping for air and bursting with power at the same time.

 

“It’s OK Dawn, I’ve got this.”

 

By the time we broke our hug the bruises were fading brown and yellow. Dawn touched them. “Slayer healing,” she said.

 

“It’s a thing.”

 

“Will you come to lunch?”

 

I shook my head, I needed to talk to Spike. “You guys, come to dinner. Spike and I will cook, Becky will be back.” This called for celebration.

 

…………………….

 

There was a lot to celebrate. Spike was home, I was starting my new career, Aunt Dawn was in town, and I felt like my life made sense. I knew where I fit into relationships with all the people that mattered to me. This circle had expanded in my mind, to include Giles, and Kelly, and even Mark. They had mattered all along, but I had felt almost an inferiority around them, like I was stupid confused Buffy, while they knew what they were doing. That was gone. I understood myself, and that made me feel like I understood them.

 

I followed Dawn down the stairs when she left. I found Spike sorting his laundry in the basement. I met him face to face and said, “Look.”

 

 

His eyes roved over me, I think he thought that I was showing him something new about my hair, or earrings or something like that, and he noticed nothing.

 

I took hold of his forearms, and arranged our hands so he was holding my forearms, the pulse points of our wrists together. He met my eyes and I let mine go dark. He looked first surprised, then concerned, then questioning.

 

“I’m the Slayer,” I said excitedly. “For Real.”

 

He peered into my eyes, I felt mine narrowing, so I closed them, took a deep breath, swallowed down a lump of doubt and opened them again.

 

I put all my consciousness into my bare feet where they met the concrete floor and sensed the earth beneath me, then I sucked up the energy through the soles of my feet, felt the power coursing up my legs, through my torso and I let my eyes go dark, and look into his even darker eyes.

 

A look of wonder passed over his face. “Buffy….Luv!”

 

A smile took over my face and I was afraid it would break the spell, but it didn’t. I still felt strong and grounded. That was the thing...I felt grounded. I was more comfortable in my Slayer self than I had been when I actually was THE Slayer! It was as if I was finally able to put all I’d done and learned since then, towards my Slayer knowing. What Spike had said was true. I was better now.

 

“Did you know?” I demanded.

 

“I knew you were never NOT the Slayer.” He meant in the way he was never NOT a man. I knew that something he loved about being with me was that he could be just a man with me, revel in it, feel it and forget about being super powered, supernatural spy guy who had to hide his identity.

 

“She’s here Spike, I can feel her.” I was whispering, but excitedly, maybe still a little terrified that if I wasn’t careful I might scare the Slayer away and she’d leave me to my own fumbling, human devices. I’d never understood the connection, or when and how I could call on the Slayer power for my own personal use. I had always felt like my powers belonged to someone and something else, and that there was something wrong with using them for me.

 

“She’s not here Buffy, YOU are.” He gave me a little shake. “You are the Slayer.”

 

I went all goosebumpy when he said that, as if “she” was responding to his words and getting sort of turned on by them.

 

“You think?” I was still whispering.

 

He put his palms up against mine and looked into my eyes. You know how they do that thing in movies, where suddenly the camera is circling the couple or the two people fighting or whatever. I felt like that was happening. I felt an energy vortex was whirling around us, like the Powers That Be were circling, sizing us up, checking us out from every angle. I felt watched, judged, but also empowered. I was being tested and inspected, but I was being found worthy.

 

I smelled burning flesh, and Spike yanked his hands away. There were blisters on his palms.

 

“What did you do?” I was still whispering.

 

“Let down my defenses.” He frowned at the burned tip of his finger. “That bloody hurts.” He glared at me as if I’d done it on purpose. “Here.” He held it out to me, I kissed it to make it better and we grinned at each other. Then we hugged like fools.

 

“Do you think this will make the gray hairs go away?” I said. He was squeezing me so hard that my voice came out strained.

 

“All three of them?”

 

“There are more than three, I’ve plucked them.”

 

“My vain girl.”

 

“Easy for you to say.”

 

He did laundry while I went shopping for a feast. I bought steak for the women, and lamb chops for him, they’re one of his favorites. I bought good wine, and cheese, fresh fruits and vegetables and Becky’s favorite mango sorbet. I stopped at a liquor store and splurged on Spike’s favorite expensive whiskey and a carton of cigarettes. Then I said, what does Buffy’s Slayer self want?

 

I dropped off the food at home and went for a mani/pedi.

 

When I got back, Becky was home. She and Spike were chattering away while they prepared the food and listened to music. Neither noticed when I entered the house and I enjoyed eavesdropping.

 

He was telling her about a place he intended to take her on their upcoming trip, somewhere he hadn’t thought of before and that he hadn’t visited in forever. She admitted she’d let her practice slide while he’d been away this time. He clucked his tongue and she cursed at him in Mandarin.

 

“Are you really taking me, without Mom?” she asked him. I could hear the hope, and uncertainty in her tone.

 

“She’ll get her turn. This is our trip, YOUR trip. We’ll have a good bit of fun without her keeping an eye on us.” I’m not sure how I knew, but I could tell that he knew I was there, listening in. And, I could tell he was answering mine and Becky’s question. Would he be there for her? I also knew, in the end, that I would be going with them. It’s the only thing that made sense, given Spike’s unique restrictions.

 

While his connections with the “underground” could get him into a lot of places after hours, there were still things he couldn’t take her to see due to his daylight issue, and it would be to Becky’s benefit to have me with her. Also, I couldn’t see Mark being OK with Becky taking off overseas with Spike on her own.

 

Becky was satisfied with his answer, and she liked having him to herself to catch up, so I went upstairs quietly and put his things away, then took a shower and dressed for dinner. I inspected what was left of the marks from his bite and knew that night, he would be able to drink from me again.

 

At dinner, I noticed, as I had before, that even though Becky isn’t Spike’s biological child, there are times she looks and sounds just like him. It made sense that there would be words she would pronounce with his inflection, and sometimes with an accent, but years spent together had left deeper impressions. She had perfected his sideways glance and lowered disapproving brow. The way they held their bows, when they played music, was exactly the same, and likewise the way they held their knife and fork.

 

I noticed, more pointedly that evening, the similarity in their expressions while speaking with my sister and mother, the way Becky had picked up his manner of gentle teasing, but also the way she’d picked up his cutting wit. Her eyes might not go black, but she could stop a person dead in their tracks with a look and a word. On the other hand, it could be an inherited trait, Dawn was quite skilled in it herself.

 

My mother and Becky, the latter not without jealousy, admired the cameo, which led to Spike suddenly “remembering” something. He reached into his pocket and brought out a little bundle, tied with string, for Rebecca. He passed it to her carefully. I noticed it was wrapped in silk.

 

She undid the string and revealed a small silver cross with a garnet set into it. The stone, Spike explained, was a second class relic. It had touched a piece of the cross of Christ. Becky was overwhelmed. By this time we had broken the ward, and she had taken confirmation in Mark’s church. It was what she wanted, and that made all the difference.

 

She asked Spike to fix it around her neck, but of course, he couldn’t. I did the honors AFTER she had hugged him in gratitude.

 

He and Becky played music for my mother while Dawn and I did the dishes and put the food away. It felt nearly like the perfect night. I sort of wished my father had been there. I nearly wished Mark had been there. I felt an almost maternal benevolence for all the world, and that more love and more family could only ever be a good thing.

 

I thought that we would do this someday, in another home overseas. We would gather and be together and it was the people and the love that would make it right, not the location. When Dawn had her holidays far away from us, they were no less special, she was still surrounded by people she loved. Love is, in a sense, its own dimension. You can be there with someone, even when there is physical distance between you. Without love, a person can be pressed up against you in a crowd yet they are a million miles away, just so much static that your brain filters out.

 

…………………….

 

The next time someone in our family traveled, it was me. I went to Council Headquarters to get “sworn in”. I wasn’t making a lifetime vow like a Watcher did, but I was signing a ream of paperwork and agreeing to abide by certain rules and restrictions that as Slayer, I had never bound myself to. I still had right of refusal, and I agreed to disagree with the Council on several things. There were things I wasn’t willing to do and orders I wasn’t willing to take. I also let them know, that I was maintaining the right to work as a free agent. I would take assignments with them, but I was not their tool.

 

There were some displeased glances exchanged around the room, but I doubt they were surprised. They all knew my history and that Spike was my life partner. They knew what he was like to deal with, and while it didn’t make their job easy, it did make him an excellent agent, as long as he was on their side.

 

I stayed in the lodgings Spike had arranged for us. We couldn’t afford to keep a flat, at that point. He rented the upstairs of a house for us. The owner was happy to give us a lower rent seeing as we’d only be using it occasionally, meaning she still had income without the bother of a constant lodger.

 

It had a kitchenette and half bath (I showered downstairs), one bedroom and a small sitting room with a couch that folded out into a second bed for when Becky was with us. It was small but very homey and comfortable and Spike had already put some or our things there. It felt especially nice to go there in the evening and find a familiar book beside the bed, and the soap and toothpaste that Spike used at home. It already felt like our place from the moment I opened the door.

 

 

When I got home, I was shocked at how different things felt. Becky seemed like she had matured a great deal as if being the woman of the house for 12 days had brought out some aspect of character none of us had realized she possessed. She had planned and made meals, rather than opting to eat take out or head to my mom’s, and had even had her Gran over for dinner with her and Spike, twice.

 

She’d also rearranged her bedroom, and following my lead, pared down her wardrobe, but that was so she’d have a viable argument about why I needed to take her clothes shopping.

 

When I remarked on the changes to Spike, he cocked his head at me and basically said: “told you so.” He HAD said that rather than harming Rebecca, having me away some of the time would be good for her.

 

As excited as I was to see a more mature version of her, I felt like something was lost during my short time away. Maybe I am just like a mother who misses their baby’s first step while they are at work, but I wasn’t there when it happened, and I am sad about that, even though it wouldn’t have happened quite that way, had I been there. Life is just like that. Becky turned a corner while I was gone, and there was a little girl part of her that I never saw again.

 

My short time away also calmed any worries she had over where things stood with her and Spike. When I got home they seemed closer, but not exactly in a father/daughter way, but more in a friends/co-conspirator way. I sensed a new camaraderie, along with even MORE frequent knowing looks between them than there previously had been, and believe me, there had been. The two of them have always had their own thing going on, and since one of their things was to get together to pick birthday and Christmas surprises for me, I didn’t interfere.

 

I mentioned the change to my mother, who had noticed it but not to the same degree I did. She was familiar with the phenomenon, having raised two daughters of her own. She said it would happen time and time again and that sometimes it would feel like a punch to the gut. I knew this. It wasn’t the first time Becky had grown up suddenly when I wasn’t looking.

 

There had been times she returned from a weekend with Mark and I felt I hardly recognized her and couldn’t believe someone could change so much, so quickly, but few of those felt as monumental as this had. Perhaps it was because I changed a great deal over those same 12 days. I didn’t return the same Buffy as when I left, and it would have been impossible for me to see Spike and Becky the way I once had.

 

I knew my mother had felt this sort of queasy loss when Spike had blown into town prior to the Ovid incident and had, with one look and his hand on my arm, taken me away from her. One day I was going to experience that. One day Becky would meet someone who would speak to her soul and beckon to her to become who she could never be if she stayed bonded to me.

 

I think Becky sensed a difference in me as well, and when we went on her clothes shopping spree I felt that we were relating differently, feeling each other out, seeing if we could still connect if we weren’t mom and little girl anymore.

 

We could and did. We had our own co-conspiratorial thing going on. I bought her a push-up bra which we knew Spike would abhor but would be too British to say anything about.

 

Before you nominate me for any mom of the year awards, I need to tell you that it wasn’t always smooth sailing. We had the normal issues to deal with, and there were times she got angry and sullen and would barely speak to me, and times when we both shouted at each other and, I kid you not, Spike sent both of us to our rooms until we could be civil.

 

Becky went through a phase when she wanted a dog and Spike simply refused because he didn’t want one in the house and that was that. She used every dirty emotional trick in the book during that particular period of cold war. She accused me of loving him more than her, choosing him over her and having an affair with him while I was married to her father. She told me I had sold out and had to listen to whatever he said because he and I had never married. Basically, she told me that I had broken up a proper happy family, to shack up in sin with a vampire and that now I had to do whatever he said because I was a kept woman. How do you spell hurt? Vengeful 12 year old.

 

When she was 14, and oh so obviously enamored with boys, I went into a panic. I remembered what I had been like. I remembered my crush on Angel, that had started when I was not very much older than her. If Angel had been Spike...there’s no telling what would have happened. Seriously. I nearly puked when the thought first came to me, my dear sweet daughter could fall “in love” with a vampire and have wildly inappropriate relations just like her mother.

 

Spike’s effort to calm me consisted of “Don’t be ridiculous, I’d hear if she had anyone climbing in her window or if she snuck out at night,” and, “Her mum turned out ok.”

 

That’s what he said, but I am also certain he had every intention of doing the terrifying hand reading, dark eye thingy, to any boy that came within 100 yards of his Rebecca and scaring the snot out of them.

 

I suggested to Spike that we take Becky with us on all our travels when she was in high school, so she would never be in one place long enough to fall in love. His helpful response was “Boys are fast the world over, Luv. It wouldn’t help.”

 

I knew one day “it” was going to happen. I hoped her Church upbringing would help delay “it”. I had no leg to stand on with that one seeing as how I’d fought against her going to church when she was a baby. I had gotten over that and was actually grateful she had that in her life. It was something I couldn’t give her and I knew the benefits of belief and a faith community. I apologized, after some time, to Mark, who was gracious about it. Now, in spite of everything I believed about the supernatural and about sex in general, I thought it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing if Becky, you know, waited until she was married to do “it”.

 

I asked Spike what he would do if he caught some boy sneaking in Becky’s window. “The right thing, of course,” was his astute reply.

 

“Which is?”

 

“Put her on birth control.”

 

Of course, it’s not that easy, nor does a little daily pill address the larger issue. He wasn’t trying to minimize it, Spike was conflicted about it himself. He didn’t believe we should hand our 15 yr old daughter a pack of birth control pills and a box of condoms and tell her to go out and have herself a ball, but it was the world she lived in. We knew, as most parents do if they are honest about how they were at that age, that Becky could turn overnight from a little girl with her Sunday school morals intact to a young woman, blind with lust and full of rebellious rage. How do you deal with that?

 

One approach, which Becky herself initiated, was to ask me about my own experience. She asked me how it had happened for me. I think I opened and closed my mouth a few times before I sat down and told her I wasn’t sure I was ready to talk about it.

 

“That bad huh?” My girl was pretty insightful.

 

I wondered if I should tell her about Angel and Scott.

 

I was pretty sure I shouldn’t tell her about Spike.

 

Seeing as how I met Ryan…

 

I wanted to be honest with my girl. “It was a boy I was dating in high school. 11th grade. We’d been going out for awhile.”

 

“Did you love him?”

 

“No, but I was curious, and he was nice.” I hadn’t even kidded myself at the time. I’d never imagined myself in love with Scott.

 

“So, was it...nice?”

 

The whole Angel incident came flooding back to me. She wasn’t asking about that part, so it wouldn’t have been fair to tell her it was an unmitigated disaster.

 

“It was ok. I wasn’t sorry.” I tried to peer back into time and remember how it had been, but there was no way to tease apart what had happened afterward. Was it nice? It had been fine. I hardly remembered the sex itself, I remembered shame and anger and fear that my mother would find out. The experience itself had been swallowed by the circumstances, but that is the story of life. Nothing happens out of context.

 

What had happened with Spike, would not have happened had I not been the Slayer and had he not been a vampire, and had I not assumed I’d be dead before I was old enough to have a proper boyfriend.

 

“I fell in love with Spike not long after that,” I told her. Or as much as I was able to be “in love” at that age.

 

“Did you have sex with him?”

 

I know I smiled.

 

“That good huh?”

 

My heart did that swelling thing, remembering being pressed against his chest and that sense of terrifying belonging. I remembered him telling me that it was that way because it was “us”.

 

And it still was.

 

“It’s OK Mom, you don’t have to tell me.”

 

I hadn’t realized my eyes were wet. I wasn’t sad, I just knew there was no way to tell her that she could understand. I remembered being young, and thinking I understood love and desire, and that I could handle it, then having my heart handed to me on a platter.

 

Who was I kidding? Life was still able to surprise me. Spike still surprised me, Becky surprised me, and I still surprised myself.

 

“It was wonderful. Like it was meant to be.” That is not a term I use lightly.

 

“It’s because you loved each other.”

 

“We did. We do.” Spike had loved me then. He risked so much to be with me, to save me, but he didn’t only risk himself. I know that now. What happened between us could have so easily gone the other way. He took a very big gamble. He could have hurt me...I could have killed him….

 

“I want it to be someone I love. The way you love SpikeWilliam.” She was very serious, and I swear to you, when I looked into her eyes, they were wise and black.

 

 

………………………..

 

And now we’ve come full circle, back to the realm of “needs to know” basis.

 

I cannot tell you about Becky’s first time because that is not my secret to tell.

 

Spike and I began our work together, and as life always is, it was full of surprises. One was that we drive each other to distraction traveling together. I always think he takes too many unnecessary risks and he thinks I over plan. It didn’t take us long to work out a system where one of us goes ahead to prepare and the other stays behind to get things settled and we meet up, having done what we needed to do in our own style.

 

Spike and Rebecca took their trip, by then we’d learned about our traveling issues and in a like manner, I would meet with them periodically and we’d spend some time together, then they would go off on their own. Becky says we put the “step”, into stepfamily.

 

 

Life is full of gifts. Mark was much more enthusiastic about letting Becky travel than I ever expected. He was glad she had the opportunity. She ended up completing her last two years of high school via correspondence while she spent the majority of it traveling, or “slumming” either in our home in Collinsville, our place in England, or Spike’s “family rez” in France. He has family there. Again, it’s not my secret to tell, but there is a place where we are welcome anytime and Becky has taken advantage of it.

 

I’ve been to Amsterdam to the Tribunal, and it’s as small, quaint and lovely as the Council is large, modern and grand.

 

I’ve learned that Spike’s life and work were not nearly as comfortable or interesting as I’d imagined. I wouldn’t have taken half the jobs he accepted because I wouldn’t want to put up with the conditions. The Council spoiled me.

 

My Slayer powers are latent. I can call them up to varying degrees as needed and can keep them honed with training. When you snooze you lose. I stay in shape, but I’ve mostly been interested in using my Slayer supernatural senses and ritual battle talents...and healing. I call that into play all the time. I haven’t seen a gray hair in years, and I haven’t had a cavity EVER!

 

One more Slayer has aged out of duty since I have. Sadly most still don’t make it past their first three years. You’d think in this modern day and age the Powers That Be would find a better way than the ritual slaughter of bright young women, but between temporal phases and endless numbers of dimensions, it can take eons for things to catch up with themselves.

 

What led me to write THIS book, was Becky. She wanted to know my story, and because I’m a process person, writing it down, thinking the thoughts, feeling the emotions, were what I needed to do to get it right. I wanted to be certain that what I was telling her was, in fact, the truth.

 

Of course, I also wanted to set the record straight about Spike and Buffy. The characters on the show are so far removed from us, but the way they were portrayed bothered us, especially when so many of the people we worked with, and who regularly saw us together, had seen the show. Spike grumbled that he should start wearing a black leather duster with the words “As Seen on TV” sewn on the back, and that way we could charge for photographs.

 

I loved the process of writing. One, because it was a nice way to pass the time while traveling. Two, because it was fun to go down memory lane. My mom and I had great times with Becky, remembering the stories. Spike loved reading over my shoulder and chuckling over the way I saw the things that happened and how vastly different it was from his own interpretation.

 

I tell him he should write a book. He says I’d be sorry if he did. Becky says he’s probably right.

 

I’m ending THIS tale here because it was meant to be the story of Buffy and Spike, and it’s accomplished that. It’s not that I think our tale is done, nothing with Spike is ever just...anything, but I’m pretty sure that as a couple, we’re going to make it. If we’ve survived raising a child together, and traveling and working together, I expect we can survive anything, even an apocalypse now and then.

 

 

Summer Evelyn L.

 

*******************************

 

Q&A

You explained clearly that Spike doesn't view sex in the same way we view it in couples, a sign of fidelity. However, you did mention that if Buffy had sex while Spike was away he would be possessive about the issue and not like it. My question was when Spike was gone for those 2 years or so, on his last long mission do you think he would have felt Buffy broke a vow to him if she had found a meaningless lover while he was gone? She has needs too. Or do you think Spike still has the old world chauvinism still embedded from his early life?  
This is difficult to answer because it would require me to not be me. I’m not someone who could find a casual lover while I was in a relationship with another man. If I was someone who could do that, I don’t know if Spike would have settled down with me.

There is nothing wrong with people having casual lovers, but I think it’s a factor of personality. Spike has had lovers who have other casual lovers, but he never set up house with them. Do you see where I’m going with this? You want to settle down with someone who wants to settle down. Spike likes how ridiculously in love with him I am.

If I had gotten involved with another man in his absence, things would have gone very badly. Spike has hinted that he would kill the man, but no, he wouldn’t simply go out and kill someone because of choice I made. It’s more a case of figurative speech. Honestly, I’m not sure what kind of retribution or vengeance Spike would take. He’s intelligent and civilized, but he has a demon in him. Still, my guess is he would take leave and I’d simply never ever hear of him again.

Had things come to that when Becky was young, he would simply have disappeared from her life as well, without a word. It’s possible that something worse could happen. Spike can be ruthless and vindictive, but he has learned that most of the time it’s not worth it. But in a moment of passion?...We will never know, and for that I am glad.

Spike has a comment on “old world chauvinism”. He said it hasn’t been so long since there were no such things as paternity tests, and reliable birth control and no man wants to put his life at risk raising another man’s child without his explicit consent. As hard as people have had to work throughout history to feed, shelter and educate children, the idea of doing that for some other blokes offspring at the expense of your own, and having the mother of your children put at risk bearing babies for another man, is unacceptable.

He also says it’s basic biology. Women are the one’s who have the babies, they are invaluable while men are expendable. Men who sleep with other men’s wives are a direct threat to the husband’s offspring, and men will defend their children and women to the point of death.

He can’t get anyone pregnant, so he considers himself a win/win situation. Safe shag, what more could anyone asks for? He says the problem is, that for most humans, for most of their lives, there isn’t anything like a purely recreational shag. Much of the world still does not have reliable birth control, and protection from STD’s, and most people don’t have sex devoid of emotion. Women and children need to be protected from men that would take advantage of them and put their lives and well-being in danger.

They are our greatest resource and the world’s future.

You could have 10,000 men and they are useless to do anything to save the human race without one woman.

 

I've been trying to keep up with the timeline and I'm guessing that Rebecca is b/w 13-15 years old. These are pretty formidable years for a teenager transitioning into a woman. Do u think that Spike is being a little selfish to want Buffy and him to fight the good fight together while Mark or her Mom help raise Rebecca? Wouldn't it be better if Spike at least grinned and bared it until Rebecca turned 18?

 

I think most of this was answered in the final chapter. You were right on target with the timeline.

Whether or not Spike is selfish has to be weighed against the fact that the work he wanted me to be involved in was of significant consequence to the well-being of humanity.

It was only after that very long battle he was part of when they had to call two new Slayers, that he really began to push. It wasn’t just that he wanted me so we could be together. He saw that they needed me.

He also fully believed, and it proved to be true, that it would do Becky no harm. She traveled all over during her teen years and college years and had access to amazing opportunities. She chose to travel more than we had anticipated for her.

I guess you could liken it to military families or the families of foreign ambassadors. There are pluses and minuses to those modes of life.

Becky has a degree and a career and doesn’t feel her life was negatively impacted by my return to work, so I will let her have the last word on that.


	31. Final Q&A

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few last wrap up questions from readers

What year was Buffy called?

I know I’ve given a lot of ‘hints’ at my time period and age but, I’m calling on the don’t ask a woman her age rule. Yeah, SO unfair right?

All I’m going to say is that I have my reasons and (mostly) they aren’t due to vanity. Spike just snorted at that.

 

How long have they been together?

Do you mean how long have Spike and I been together? I guess it’s another hint, but, two decades and counting.

 

Has the aging process for Buffy been somewhat delayed?

This is hard to say because (ahem!) I’m not that old yet and many people stay healthy into their older years. I do enjoy better than average health, but scar tissue is scar tissue is scar tissue. I still have aches and pains from my leg and various other injuries, which have always made me feel old. I swear, sometimes I’m like, weather’s about to change, my leg is acting up.

And there are still lingering issues from the phase shift. Still, I look pretty good for my age. My mom does too, so I think part of it is genetic. Spike says maybe I should try drinking a certain kind of demon blood that has high restorative properties, but the idea of drinking or eating anything from a sentient being, one with written language and literature, is just too...I’m not going to do it.

I could get donated blood from one, but still. No, I just...can’t.

 

Has Rebecca married?

Becky isn’t married, but she is engaged! She and her sweetheart want a big fancy wedding so they are saving up for it because they want to pay for it themselves, so it could be another year or two.

 

What happened to Wendy?

Wendy is living in the states. She and her family run a garden shop and she still does sorcery for the Council. She has kids and I’d say she’s pretty much successful in every way.

She did some consulting with the writers for the TV show which she really enjoyed and has led to some work consulting for other TV and movies involving supernatural themes.

She has written widely on sorcery, but most of her work has been published in sorcery journals that are not available to the mundane public. If you go through the right channels you can get your hands on her works.

 

To Giles?

He and his wife have two kids. He’s living in England and working with the Council. He actually took another Slayer, which is very uncommon. Sadly, she was lost after 17 months.

He, interestingly, has two patents! Neither are in any way Slayer or supernatural related. One is for a wine bottle opener that works better with those new artificial corks, and the other is for an athletic shoe fastener that replaces laces, velcro etc. He is contracting with a major shoe company to put it into production on some of their products!

He has a few other ideas and Becky and his kids have been encouraging him to do Kickstarter, but he is opposed to the idea of crowdsourcing and is hoping to sell them to someone.

 

Was there ever any word about Wesley?

Neither the Council nor Giles has ever come out with any more information concerning Wes, but Spike maintains that Wes was not killed and the Council knew where he was taken.

I’ve had Spike look into it for me and he says that the rumors are that Wes was eventually recovered. He was “materially changed” by the experience. Which apparently means that he has much more significant residual effects from his dimensional experiences than I have from my phase shift.

Rumor has it that he was physically “broken” but also imbued with powers and continues to work for the Council quietly and undercover.

Please keep in mind that is RUMOR only. I was never aware of Wes having any family etc, but he must and I don’t want to go telling tales. The official word remains that Wes lost his life in the line of duty and his body was unfortunately never recovered.

 

What happened to Angel? 

Angel was involved in the planning and writing of the television show that bears his name. I assume that some of what occurred on the show is based on his experiences.

He still works with the Council and other supernatural organizations fighting on the side of good. I’ve had very sporadic contact with him, as has Spike, but nothing much to speak of.

 

Will there be a sequel?

I have no sequel to this book planned. It was primarily written as the story of Buffy and Spike and that story feels “told”. I guess it’s possible I could tell some of the stories of my work since I got back in the biz, and some of the experiences Spike and I have had together.

It will depend, I am sure, on how well this book does and whether or not the public, and subsequently, the publisher clamors for it. What kind of stories would you like?

 

Was there ever an 'Oz'?

Nope.

 

Or Cordelia?

Yes, she was Xander’s girlfriend for a while during high school. She is very briefly mentioned in the early part of this book, but she was not much involved in what I did nor were we ever close friends.

 

Tara?

I believe that Wendy worked with the writers to create Tara but she is not based on a specific person.

 

Anya?

Nope. Xander married a completely normal mortal human woman.

 

Does the slayer essence and healing you retain slow the aging process?

I’m going out on a limb and saying I look a little bit younger for my age than average, but that generally I’m aging normally, but with better health.

 

A number of people have asked if Spike might write HIS version of the story. Here is his take on it.

Do you know what you’re asking?

OK, me again. Lol. Spike’s story isn’t exactly ready for prime time. He says he doesn’t have a “version” of the same story, I’m going to see if I can explain this the way he explained it to me. His take is that there are different versions of the same story, they are completely different stories. What brought him, ultimately, to Collinsville was such a completely different set of events that there is all that backstory, etc.

His tale is even less like the TV show and he wonders if people are actually interested in his story or if they are hoping he would be filling in the blanks of someone else’s story.

He has no intention of “riding my coat tails”.

That’s not a “no”, take it more as a warning. It could take a lot of ugly before you get to the Spuffy goodness.

 

Do you and Spike have a “song”?

Um...I’d say we have several, don’t most couples who’ve been together awhile?

Probably the one that I first think of is the French lullaby. I’ve already shared a link to that one.

Here are links to two songs, one that always reminds me of him and one he says reminds him of me.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNA7DcVppEs

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_izt7vlJKM0


End file.
